


Love is a Battlefield

by EchoGalen



Category: Lost Girl
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-05
Updated: 2013-07-14
Packaged: 2017-12-14 02:03:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 39,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/831444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EchoGalen/pseuds/EchoGalen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lauren is on the battlefield in Afghanistan when a new soldier, Tamsin, joins her unit. Tamsin knew since day one that it was her job to see Lauren to the otherside - Lauren being brave and honorable enough to have a true warrior's afterlife. But the Valkyrie trips up on her feelings for the soldier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Her Mark

 “Ballpoint pen. I need a ballpoint pen,” Psychological operations, second class Lewis shouted as she tried to control the slow spill of blood from the wounded soldiers neck wound. He had caught a fire bomb in the face out on patrol and he had, stupidly Lewis fumed in her mind, inhaled the fire and smoke. If she didn't get a ballpoint pen in her hand freaking now, the soldier was going to suffocate to death.

Thankfully one of the soldiers, Paul was his name, swiftly took out a pen and handed it to her. Saying a quick 'Thanks', Lewis quickly unscrewed the components and took out the small casing tube. She had already cut a small slit into the cricothyroid membrane and all she had to do was breathe into the tube to get the soldier breathing again. Taking a deep breath as she leaned over the soldier, shit he was still lucid she thought as his eyes watched her and then back up at the sky, Lewis talked to him calmly as he panicked, telling him exactly what she was doing.

“Hey, look at me,” Lewis said kindly, her brown eyes finding his light blue ones as they fell from the sky to look at her. “Hi there, soldier.” Looking down at the soldier's tags, the same tags Lewis wore with slightly different markings, she said, “Rameriez, I'm going to have you back on your feet in no time, okay? You just have to trust me. Can you do that for me, gunny?”

The gunny nodded, what little he could nod, and Lewis nodded her head, a small smile loosening the tension in her face but not in her mind.

“I'm going to breathe for you now, okay? It's not going to hurt, but you will feel a tingling sensation as I put the tube in. Do you get me?”

Lewis knew the soldier would reply with “I get you” but the wound was compromising everything that had to do with his throat, he began to suck in harsh breaths again, trying to respond and Lauren had to quickly deter him. Putting a hand gently down on his shoulder, she looked at him with a cold seriousness in her eyes. The soldier immediately calmed, what other choice did he have, and tried to breath normally again. They had gone through that same song and dance since he had come to her on a small dark green cot, his face more bloodied than it was now, until Lewis had washed it away.

“M-my hands, my fingers, are they...” The gunny choked out after calming, and despite the better judgment of Lewis, she allowed him to ask the question in full.

“You'll be sniping these guys with grace in no time.” She smiled, a fake smile even if she told the truth, but a smile none the less. The gunny slowly nodded, all that he could nod, and looked up toward the sky again as he tried to calm himself from his inability to drink in a long stream of air.

Sighing softly, she pinched open the small bit membrane and inserted the tube. Quickly grabbing a tourniquet, she quickly tied it around the soldier's neck to keep the shaft in place. Bending down after she had done this, Lewis quickly put her lips over the pen's outer casing and blew a small breath of air. Looking back up at Rameriez showed he still couldn't breath on his own. Placing her lips around the casing again, she breathed another puff of air, then another, and another.

Lewis was about to give up, she would have traded out the duties of blowing air into the man's lungs, but the gunny's chest rose suddenly as he took his first gulp of air on his own. Coughing laughter escaped his lips and he looked down towards where the corpsman knelt beside him.

“T-thank you,” He whispered, trying his hardest to choke out the syllables.

“Hey,” Lewis put her hand on the kid's shoulder and looked down at him, a smile on her lips again, “it's my job. Now you rest up so that and the next thing you know, you'll be back home.”

The gunny slowly closed his eyes as he nodded slightly, believing in the doctor's words with every fiber of his being, and either it was the sheer weight of what he had to ordeal or the pain killer kicking in, the gunny fell immediately to sleep without another word.

“Petty officer Lewis,” One of her subordinate's said just as she finished, a hint of some unrecognizable emotion in her voice, and the blonde turned to see what had her third class riled.

“We just lost our gunny here and they're already sending a new one? The fuck is that about,” Another subordinate scoffed, looking towards the jeep that was riding along the dirt path.

Lewis, her hands still bloodied from the minor surgery; as she hadn't had time to get a pair of elastic gloves, and had scrubbed in with alcohol, and a few other germ killing materials, looked hard into the jeep and saw a very tall, her leg gave her height away as it was propped on the dash of the jeep, woman who also had a large high powered sniper rifle in her hand that gave away her position.

“He's not even out of here yet...” Lewis looked at the ground, wonderment of how the higher ups had known their gunny was taken down, and back up toward the approaching jeep. Lewis watched the lighter blonde only as the wind whipped around her face, small strands catching in her lips for an instant to blow away in the next, her eyes only trained on the corpsman. The darker blonde raised an eyebrow but shook her head quickly, she was sure the new gunny was just scoping out the unit's medic, and looked back down to Rameriez.

“Let's get him bagged and tagged, folks. We don't have all day.”

The third classes swiftly moved around her, lifted up the cot the former gunny rested in, and walked into the large medical tent. Lewis watched them go, her head dipping down in frustration, the gunny had been the fourth man wounded in the past two days, and instead of looking at the approaching jeep, she simply walked over to the small spout that was connected to an underground well in the small encampment. Turning it on, thankfully they had added a turning lever instead of a pumping one, the cool water splashed out onto the ground and she bent slowly as she moved her hands and lower arms into the water.

Lewis watched sidelong as the jeep stopped, just before entering camp, and the new female gunny get out. She moved pretty agile, Lewis thought, as the woman seemed to exit the jeep- her hands on the upper handlebars, and she had used only her upper body strength to get out- gracefully and with no hitch at all. If not agile, she was strong at least, Lewis thought. She watched as the gunny moved around to the jeeps driver door, salute the driving officer, and talk to him for a few moments. Lewis had just unwrapped a bar of soap, soap that was set up neatly on the sides of the water spout, and began to lather her hands and arms as the gunny finished her talk.

Without another look back, or another salute, the gunny walked into camp, her high powered rifle slung across her left shoulder. She at least knew how to stay aware of danger, Lewis thought as the gunny would take less than two seconds to pull it off her shoulder, place the trigger in her dominant hand, and pull the catch. Rameriez, bless him, had not been so smart.

Catching the medic's eye, the gunny sauntered over and watched, her eyes trailing toward the small stream Lewis was making with the water, as the second class washed her hands free of blood.

Moments passed and, finally, the gunny spoke. “You know how to shoot that thing,” She asked, eying Lewis' side arm. The semi-automatic, Heckler & Koch pistol, which Lewis had never used in the field, hung on her belt securely and as Lewis looked down at it, she realized she always forgot she was wearing one.

“Yes, I know how to shoot,” Lewis said polity. Eying the deadly looking sniper rifle, more deadly than even the one issued to their unit's last gunny, she said, “Do you know how to shoot _that_ thing?”

The gunny smiled, her smile was brilliant Lewis found, and she said, “Light Fifty here, yeah, I can shoot her. I would have gone for the Barrett, but this one's prettier.” The gunny winked and Lewis rolled her eyes. Some people still knew there was a war on.

“How did command know we needed another gunny? Ours got wounded no longer than an hour ago.”

“Word gets by in an hour, doc.”

“Doc?”

“You _are_ the doctor here, aren't you?”

Lewis sighed and placed her now clean hands to her temple, leaving a cooling water mark at the bridge of her nose. “I'm a corpsman, I'm not a real doctor yet. I have to go to school for that, which obviously an enlisted geek like me did not do.” Lewis clapped her hands together, a feigned smile plastered on her face, as she looked up at the taller woman.

“You always in such a bad mood?”

Lewis was struck by this and quickly shook her head. Pinching the bridge of her nose again, she said, “I'm...sorry, gunny. I didn't mean to come off like a normal...”

“Jar-head?”

“Exactly.”

“No problem, doc. I get it all the time. A female sniper, what are the chances, right?” The gunny shifted her weight to her left foot and adjusted her rifle across her shoulder. “So. Whaddya guys do for fun? Please tell me you have beer.”

“Gunny, that's the one thing we've got abundance of.” Lewis waved her hand toward a small tent, the designated bar tent, and the gunny smiled ruefully.

“Let the games begin, doc.”

+++

Tamsin had watched her target since the small military unit camp came into sight. Her hair whipped in front of her face, obscuring her vision for only a few moments here or there, but her eyes never left that of the brilliant brown ones of the corpsman. She was pretty, Tamsin thought as the jeep jumped to and fro on the dirt path, and she had a very nice body. The woman, the valkyrie, knew the thoughts were just passing ones, the real reason why she was there pretty much destroyed fraternization, but she enjoyed the way the blonde's eyebrow raised slightly before she clapped her hands after turning to her subordinates.

Her commanding officer, or so everyone else believed, was a dark fae merman that went by the name of Harold. He had just so happened to have gotten the order the gunny in the unit had taken a nasty fire bomb to the face, and here Tamsin was, exiting the vehicle and coming around to the driver's side with a rifle around her shoulder. To make things look official, the valkyrie saluted and whispered a couple of nonsense words to the merman. Harold nodded, playing along with the game, and as they both saw the corpsman go towards the spout and get out a new, fresh piece of soap, only then did Tamsin make her move.

Coming into the camp she had befriended herself to the woman, the very shorter woman Tamsin found as she got closer, and she had to roll her eyes at herself for even noticing. The woman was feisty, Tamsin found, but she had chipped her only a little as she had asked for a bar. The medic had smiled broadly, but not a real smile, and motioned back toward the large tent at the left center of the camp. They had gone to the doc's tent quickly, Tamsin didn't have her own set up yet, and she had put down her gear and her weapon. Looking around the tent, Tamsin found no sign of anyone really living in it, no pictures to remind a soldier of home, nothing. For such a strong human, she really didn't keep any sentimentality.

So here they were, drinking shots and laughing over the stupidity of the war in Afghanistan, among other things. Tamsin had told the blonde her full name- Rundstrom, A. Tamsin- and the blonde had been kind, and sober enough, to confirm to Tamsin who she really was. Lewis, E. Lauren...

Instead of dwelling on it, Tamsin quickly turned the conversation back to the war. It was common place for soldiers to talk about it, of course it was, but others, such as the idiots in the corner that had been getting profusely heated over the blonde's discussion did not like the topic. In their minds, they were there to follow orders, and that was that. They were there to fight and die for their country in the ultimate act of patriotism, and that was all their lives required, all it asked of them to do.

“And you know,” Lewis slurred, she had had way too many drinks that would make even the most hardened jar-head swoon with want, “I'm so tired of carrying a weapon. I'm- I'm a doctor not a gunny.” She had moved her hand, and her drink, in the direction of the valkyrie and it split slightly onto her commandos. “Oop,” Lewis said, her fingers flying to her lips as she realized what she had done. Not that she was in the right mind to really comprehend it, as she began giggling immediately.

Tamsin smiled and said, “Yeah, I think you've had enough. Where's your tent, doc?”

The corpsman didn't have time to answer as a strong hand clamped down onto Tamsin's shoulder and spun her around, if she hadn't have let go of the blonde when she did, they would have gone spinning together. An alcohol stinking man's breath was in her face almost instantly and Tamsin had to hold back her nausea from being around all these humans.

“You're talkin' about our lives, our country here, gunny,” The man breathed, looking into her eyes squarely.

Tamsin was tall, taller than most women, and she realized she was just as tall as the burly man that disputed their conversation. It would have been easy, Tamsin knew, it would have been so easy to take out the man and his companions in little under a minute. But, the valkyrie knew, she wasn't there for that. She was there for Lewis and that was it. Everything else was... useless.

“Hey man,” She said, holding up her hands, “we're both drunk and we just want to go back to our tents. Sorry and ra-ra-ra, okay, dude?”

That seemed to get the man even angrier. As Tamsin turned, placing a hand on Lewis' arm, she quickly turned when she sensed the air displace around her. Catching the man's outstretched arm, the arm that was coming to swing right towards her, she directed it smoothly into the bar's wooden feature and the man groaned in pain. Kicking him in the kneecap made him fall uselessly to the floor and Tamsin brought up a hard knee into his face. The marine went down instantly and Tamsin eyed the second.

One of his jar-head buddies lunged at her, and she quickly dodged that too, her right hand going up to one side of his hand, the left on the other, and she pushed hard on the wrist, making it groan and pop as it was dislocated. The marine howled in pain and grabbed his wrist as if it was dislodged and Tamsin rolled her eyes.

“You'll sleep it off,” She said nonchalantly. Eying the rest of the bar, the occupants either looking at her with admiration or foam laced hatred, and she made sure before she turned around again that no one would try to attack. Turning and putting a hand on Lewis' arm again, she said in a chipper tone, “How 'bout we go now.”

“Works for me,” Lewis said groggily.

Walking out into the hot air, strange how hot it still was out there, Tamsin led Lewis back to the tent. The human was whispering something, a tune or something, and Tamsin tuned it out as she opened the small flap of the tent. Laying the doc gently onto her cot, the valkyrie put the covers around her with care. She was about to grab her weapon and leave, but the darker blonde caught her arm before she had grabbed her rifle and walk out of the flap of the tent.

“Thanks for tonight. I haven't laughed like that in... years.”

“Yeah, no problem, doc.”

“You can sleep here if you want. I don't have a roommate... bunk-mate... mate.”

Tamsin looked over at the empty cot on the opposite side of the room and shrugged, why the hell not, and shrugged off her boots. Twisting down onto the cot to get comfortable, as much as one could get comfortable on a bed like razors, she lay on her side looking at Lewis, her head resting on her bent arm.

She had to admit, that night was pretty damn fun. The doc sure knew how to party and have a good time.

But, the valkyrie's side whispered in her ear, she's going to die soon. It's no good getting infatuated with-

_I'm not infatuated!_

-with a mark. You know that.

Tamsin rolled her eyes at her own conscious talking to her, but she couldn't help it, the darker blonde had a way of pulling people in immediately. It wasn't like it was a big deal, Tamsin would do her job, she would wait until Lewis died in the red soaked fields, and she would deliver her up to Valhalla. It wasn't like Tamsin was... betraying herself in some way. She was doing her job, her birth right, her genetics.

Lewis, however human and frail, had earned herself a seat in Valhalla. That accomplishment alone was enough to propel Tamsin's guilty pleasure in the woman. How she moved, how she talked, and how she held herself. She enjoyed just... watching the woman. A woman who knew she wad dying every moment, but still was content to live her remaining hours, days, years, to the fullest by helping and healing others.

The valkyrie chuckled to herself, putting her hand to her brow, and sighed halfheartedly. What was she doing? It was only the first night. She had so many more to go before the medic reached her untimely end. And there was nothing.

_Nothing._

Tamsin was going to do about it but let it play out like it should. After all, Lauren was her mark. And if there was one thing Tamsin knew, when you were assigned a mark... you _never_ let it go.

Never.


	2. Target Practice

Soldiers didn't get much downtime. They didn't get any downtime, actually. Each marine were on rotation, one would sleep for three hours tops, then would be woken up by one of their comrades to take their post. Each soldier would get around an hour of sleep to four every day, and if they were lucky they'd have small naps in between.

The unit was always on edge, even if they weren't near any enemy encampment, they knew they could still be attacked at any moment of the day. Just yesterday on patrol through the desert, their gunny had taken a fire bomb to the face and chest, doing the most mundane thing as walking on a road. It was like a powerful, wordless, entailment in the units, that they could die any moment, and that alone was enough to keep them awake for days. That's just how it was.

So when petty officer Lewis woke up and saw a small stream of sun coming into her tent, she was completely disoriented and surprised. For her to sleep through an entire night, even if it was around six hours, it was strange no one had reported an injury and ran into her tent asking for her. She had no memory of the night before, everything was blurred and the faces she did see, strangely enough, only held laughing mouths as they looked at her. She could, briefly, remember a tall blonde, lighter than her own hair, walking up to her and asking her where the bar was, but everything after she had shot back the drinks became a blur.

Lewis cursed herself, it wasn't like her to go out and get drunk with just anyone, she didn't make it a habit of getting drunk at all, and to do so when just the other day a soldier had been so fatally wounded... if she hadn't had all her faculties, he would have died. She couldn't help but think of what would happen if a soldier had been injured, or worse an attack had befallen the camp when she was shitfaced, and she groaned slightly to herself as she moved the back of her hand onto her forehead.

Instead of turning over, away from the tent's opening and her duties, Lewis stayed on her back and ran her fingers through her hair, sighing slightly. She was hungry, her stomach growled menacingly, and she wondered if there was an apple in the canteen for her to munch on for the rest of the day. Thankfully, they weren't back at boot camp and the canteen stayed open almost twenty-four/seven. If it didn't, Lewis knew she would go hungry for the rest of the day until they served dinner for the soldiers. That bar, she thought slowly, she could always go to the bar if she was really desperate for something to eat. The slew of peanuts that sat on the bar's tables would be right up her alley.

She shivered as she thought of her dreams and memories of the bar, of the faceless and only smiling teeth people, and she scratched her stomach as she ran her fingers through her hair again.

_Wait a minute..._

Looking down at herself, she saw she was wearing nothing more than a tank top and her cargo pants; her pistol still clipped to her right side and she still had her boots securely on her feet. Though it was what she wore most often, it was way too hot to wear her jacket constantly, she had the distinct memory of wearing it yesterday night with a small shirt over it. Putting her fingers to her forehead, she tried to remember what the hell happened the other night, knowing she hadn't had relations with anyone, and flung her hand back down on the cot with a huff. She really was never going to get drunk again, she promised.

Lewis looked over, across the small space which housed one small cot, usually an open one, and saw someone sleeping soundly in the bed on the opposing side of the area. A cot, Lewis knew, which was never filled with anyone, not even a wounded patient. Her mouth opened to ask the question that was pressing on her, and she swung her legs to the ground of her own cot, about to get up to move across to the sleeping person. She wasn't in the mood to see why someone had the audacity to enter her tent when she was sleeping if it wasn't a medical emergency.

She rarely got upset, angry even, with the soldiers- her nicknames around the camp happened to be Hotpants or Petty Officer Pretty, that was usually adorned with wolf whistles, or Cucumber, though she despised it and found it to be oh so ridiculous- but she was not in the mood for one of them to drunkenly saunter in to her domain without asking her or making their presence known.

Before she could push herself from her cot, Lewis froze, her eyes traveled to the ground, as she combed her fingers through her hair again. Jumping back onto her cot, her legs were bent under her as she expertly balanced on the balls of her feet, her joints aching with the sudden pressure. Moving faster than she had ever moved in her life, she eyed the thing on the ground in between the medic and the sleeping individual, and flicked her eyes quickly to the tent's flap opening. Looking back towards the sleeping person, Lewis had to make up her mind whether to risk her own safety and get the marine up, or if she was going to try to get out of the tent fast enough before the thing on the ground could get to her.

Looking between the sleeping form and the flap of the door, Lewis made her decision.

+++

Tamsin, who had been sleeping pretty damn peacefully, was woken up by an incessant hissing noise. Taking the blanket off her face, she was so not in the mood for this, she looked around the room quickly to see where the noise was coming from. The hitching noise came in another breath and Tamsin looked over to see the opening to the tent being held open, a small frame of a woman's top half poking in.

Lewis was there, her blonde tousled hair raining in front of her face, her lips pressed together in a thin line. She was trying to convey something, her eyes seemed to hold some type of emotion Tamsin couldn't put her finger on, probably about how she was upset Tamsin had spent the night in her cot- the valkyrie knew the petty officer wouldn't remember any of the other night from how drunk she was- and she was about to turn over to go back to sleep when the blonde's eyes darted to the ground and back up into her eyes.

Then it clicked. Lewis' eyes didn't hold anger, Tamsin saw, they held fear.

Following her eyes downward to the ground, the valkyrie had to hold back a scream of terror when a very large, very grotesque, gold spider looked back into her eyes. It's jaw appendages were two sizes way too big for an average spider, not that that specific order of spider was a normal one, and it's body took up a good six inches on the ground. Tamsin could see every small hair that ran off it's body, and it's legs were looking pretty menacing as they bent slightly at the hissing noises that were coming from its left.

Flinging her blanket off of her quickly and getting to the balls of her feet- she would have been proud to know Lewis had done the same exact thing, just as a warrior would- she eyed the tent's flap and back to the giant spider. She didn't want to seem like a enormous baby in front of the medic, she however also didn't want to have her stomach eaten open by the spider, and she bit her bottom lip to not let out scream. She could deal with almost anything, fae or underfae alike, but she could not for the life of her handle creepy crawly spiders.

Eying her blanket, Tamsin picked it back up in ginger hands, and instead of throwing it at the spider, she threw it to make a barrier for herself and the arachnid. Getting up her nerve, the spider had not moved an inch after speedily turning it's entire body to look at the lump in it's way, and Tamsin held her breath as she jumped off of the cot and onto the ground. Her feet screamed at her from the sudden brush of dirt that her bare feet smashed against, but she ignored it. Without looking back, hoping the spider wouldn't follow, she grabbed Lewis' midsection as she was letting out a stream of high pitched wordless syllables, most of which being 'eeeeeeeee', and flung her around as she exited the tent at half speed.

Tamsin's weight was distributed wrongly and she had to swiftly turn, Lewis in her hands, as she exited the tent and got out into the incredibly dry air. After they had spun around again, and the strong valkyrie had stopped with her incessant high pitched whine, Tamsin looked into Lewis' eyes and cracked a smile, just as the medic seemed to do.

“That was, uh,” Lewis said, her breath tickling the hair that fell in front of Tamsin's face.

“Fun,” Tamsin finished, looking into brown eyes. Eying the tent again, she looked back into the smaller woman's eyes and said, “You know you didn't have to wake me up, you know?”

“Oh yeah?” Lewis grinned and was ready to hear the next part of the joke.

“Oh yeah. My spidey sense was tingling the whole time,” Tamsin said, a smile tracing her lips.

The women laughed long and languid, but it was quickly ruined as a dawning look came into Lewis' eyes. She quickly pushed her arms down her sides, making Tamsin release her midsection, and folded her arms across her chest. Either she didn't want to see anyone staring at them, or she was trying to show respect for the chain of command, Tamsin didn't know. Instead of looking at a fidgeting Lewis, something dawned on her as well as she looked back towards the tent.

“Shit, my gun,” Tamsin said, and she began to walk back towards the opening.

Lauren grabbed her arm quickly, her eyes widening, and she almost screamed, “Are you serious! We just got out of there and you want to go back in?”

“It's just a itty bitty spider, doc. I think I can manage.”

“That's not what you said when you woke up to the sight of it. If I recall, you were just as scared as I was. And,” She continued, “I fondly remember you saying something along the lines of 'eee' as you ran out.”

“We all have our flaws.”

Lewis's cheeks burned but she said, “A solifugae can tear a hole in your stomach as big as my fist, gunny.” To emphasize her point, Lewis dropped her hand from the valkyrie's arm and held up her hand in a fist, in front of Tamsin's face.

“Uh, what now, doc?” Tamsin put her pinkie in her ear to illustrate her point.

Lewis sighed and said, “Most commonly known as a camel spider.”

“Well then give me your gun so I can shoot it.”

“I am _not_ giving you my gun.” Lewis put her hand protectively around her holstered pistol.

“Fine, then you shoot it, come on.”

“No!”

Tamsin looked into brown eyes and rolled her own. “Well if you're not going to come with me so _you_ can shoot it, and you won't give me your gun so _I_ can shoot it, what do you suggest?” Before Lewis could respond she asked, “Have you ever even fired that gun before in the field?”

Lewis seemed abashed and said, “O-of course I have!”

“In the field,” Tamsin repeated, a small smirk on her lips.

“I... no, I haven't exactly shot anything in the field. I haven't needed to.”

“Then this will be excellent practice,” Tamsin said, slightly singing excellent as she did.

“No, I don't think so. I'm not one for... shooting things.”

Tamsin looked down at the medic, saw how her eyes had darkened just a little as she looked down, fidgeting with her fingers like some nervous habit, and she sighed. “They don't attack humans all that often, do they?” Instead of dredging up anything form the medic's past, Tamsin looked back into the flaps of the tent and sighed as she couldn't see anything but the blackness that cascaded over it. Looking back at the blonde, she raised her eyebrows in the silent question.

“No, they don't attack humans- on a normal basis! Gunny,” Lewis yelled as the valkyrie rolled her eyes and moved the flaps open to enter the large tent again. Following behind her quickly, Lewis stopped just before she entered the tent. Groaning into her palm, she stepped aside from the flaps just in case the gunny needed a quick exit, and eyed the doorway apprehensively as she covered her mouth with her hand.

“You _can_ come in, you know. It's gone,” Tamsin yelled from inside the tent. After grabbing her rifle, and securing her socks and boots firmly around her feet, she quickly stepped back out again, eying the smaller woman. “Did you miss me?”

Refusing to answer the absurd question, Lewis asked, “What's so special about a rifle that you would go back in there? I saw how frightened you were, and yet you went back anyways; why?”

Tamsin looked down at the medic for a few moments and held up her rifle from her body. “This rifle is enchanted,” She said, her voice low and serious.

One look into the valkyrie's eyes, cold and exact, made Lewis let out a rush of air from her lungs and she tried to play it off. “Oh with what? Unicorn blood? Eye of newt?”

“Actually,” Tamsin cut in before the medic could fish for yet another cliched item, “unicorn blood is used to heal wounds. It's painful and it'll leave your body racked from the speedily recovery, but it'll heal almost any wound or wounds faster than half a day. Eye of newt,” She continued, “is usually only used as a alcoholic beverage sweetener. I hear it's to die for in some countries. But me, I can barely stand it.”

Before Lewis could even try to play off this cold assertion, she made a small yelp as a hand clamped down on her behind and she almost jumped ten feet into the air. Looking around she saw one of the grunts, who had obviously not been in the bar or heard about last night's fight as he did it with Tamsin standing just beside her, raised up his hands in mock surrender.

“Sorry 'bout that, Petty Officer Pretty, my hand just seemed to slip.”

Lewis looked like she was ready to kill the man but instead said politely, “Do you need anything, private?”

“Well, you see I wanted to know if you were free tonight, seeing as I've got some time on the video and webcam, and wanted to see if you'd like to watch a movie.”

Lewis barely had time to answer herself when Tamsin cut in, stepping in front of her, her rifle making her bicep bulge with the weight of it as she held the butt of it on her hip.

“Sorry, pal, I don't think she's interested.”

“And who the hell are you?”

“Your commanding officer, mosquito. So I suggest you buzz-buzz off.” Her smile, along with her feigned happy voice, made her look so enticingly menacing. Tamsin knew if the kid hadn't seen or heard about the brawl in the bar, she was going to give him a pretty damn nice viewing of it where everyone could see him get knocked on his ass. People like him needed to be knocked off a few pegs, and Tamsin was sure every female in the encampment wouldn't mind.

One look at her, even without her patch designating what rank she was, made the private back up a step by the sheer force Tamsin seemed to exude.

“Whatever,” He said, raising his hand and swatting the air in front of him as he walked away.

Tamsin slowly turned back towards Lewis, her eyes still trailing after the private, and looked into brown eyes. “So,” She said, as if the event didn't just happen, “Where's the best place to shoot?”

Lewis' mouth dropped open, either at the ridiculous question or the way Tamsin had seemed to forget about the private, and she quickly said, “T-there isn't, I mean... there is but you're not allowed.”

“Why not?”

“Because it would use up too much ammo.”

“I brought my own.” Tamsin's eyes flashed and she asked again, “So, where's a great place to shoot?”

“I-if you have a silencer... I can show you.”

“Aren't you needed here?” Tamsin began to walk away as she asked. The blonde looked around her, back at the medic, and saw she was literally weighing the pros and cons of coming with the valkyrie. If she left the tent unattended, a soldiers ended life would literally be on her head, however that would be simply solved by the training third classes that were under her. If she went, she could see the valkyrie that had saved her twice now- of course her only remembering this one time- and could see this so called “enchanted” rifle.

Looking back to the tent, then to Tamsin, then back to the bar, Lewis bit her lip in thought. Should she really-

“Well, are you coming,” Tamsin yelled, tired of waiting.

Lewis sighed as she blinked and turned from the tent and looked at Tamsin. Quickly running the few feet between them, she made her decision.

+++

“Okay, if you want to learn how to fire a gun-”

“I _know_ how to fire a gun, thank you.”

“-just watch me,” Tamsin said, looking through the scope of her rifle. Shooting objects was scarce out in a desert like this one, but the valkyrie had briefly spotted some cacti off in the distance. There was a small bushel of trees, either from some weird attempt at nature to give the folks an oasis, or from common engineering, Tamsin didn't know, but as she spotted the greenery as she was being lead there, she couldn't help but smile.

Tamsin heard the small trickling of water as the pond behind her began to fill up from the release of pressure the water made. She began to breath deeply, in and out- she could feel her legs going a little numb as they hadn't been moved in awhile behind her-, until right in mid-breath, she stopped suddenly. Her eye was on one of the cactus's arms, per say, as it swayed in the dry air. Without taking her eye off the target, she swiftly brought her trigger finger down onto the catch after releasing the safety, and waited a few moments as the wind brushed the cactus in it's grasp. Pressing the catch oh so gently made the butt of the gun recoil slightly into her shoulder as a soft pop came from the muzzle. The cactus's arm shot off suddenly, with only a split second from the release of the bullet from the barrel and the target, and fell into the ground with an updraft of dust. Tamsin blinked, and began breathing again as she raised her head from the scope of her gun, and over at Lewis.

“You call that a shot,” Lewis asked, her lips holding a small smile, she was obviously trying to be cheeky. The woman had pulled her hair into a small pony tail, copying the valkyrie's which was pulled into a loose bun, and she looked extremely enticing as small strands that escaped her tail brushed into her eyes.

“Oh you didn't like that, huh?” Tamsin said, a small smirk holding her lips in place as well, as she snuggled herself into her sniping position again.

As she did the same routine again, she stopped mid-breath, and fired three more rounds than she had intended to. One ripping into the cactus's left “arm”, the next into it's “head” and the last entering at the base of the body. It took little time to adjust the position of her rifle, and shoot all three targets in succession, even with the breeze, and as she began to breath normally again, she could hear the small gasp Lewis made from witnessing the shots with her binoculars.

“So, was that also what I'd call a shot?”

Lewis lowered her binoculars slowly, trying to think of an appropriate comeback, but she failed and simply said, “Yeah, whatever.” A small smile covered her lips, a smile that hadn't been there for a very long time, and it made Tamsin smile right back.

That was, however, until Tamsin's ears, and even her body could feel it, picked up something rumbling from a very far distance. Immediately stopping and going still, she barely registered when Lewis asked her what was wrong, and she looked over to see where the cactus had fallen. Quickly looking through her scope again, she quickly turned it from left to right, trying to see something, anything, that could explain the rumbling noise that was permeating her ear drums and her body.

She panned to the left- nothing.

She panned to the right slowly- nothing again.

Panning to the left again, more slowly- there it was!

A small, smaller than most, jeep that was rumbling across the ground, it's tires and fast approach making the dust waft upward, into their faces. Faces that were clad in aviator sunglasses and thick bandanas covering their noses and mouths from the sand. Small bandanas with tails strung across their heads kept the sun from beating on them, and Tamsin saw through her scope they had small and worn AK-47 assault rifles neatly placed in the crook of their arms or across their shoulders.

“Shit,” Tamsin breathed, watching as instead of coming to the oasis, something they were probably doing, they were heading for the camp. They probably didn't know it was even there, but instead was only there to refuel their water supply, but they were headed for it just the same.

“What,” Lauren asked, as she tried to look through her own binoculars to see what had Tamsin on edge. “Shit,” She breathed as the enemy came into view. “Gunny, what do we do? What do we do?”

“We do what we have to to protect the men and women in that camp,” Tamsin said simply, looking through her scope again, happy- as happy as one could be from about to take someone's life- the safety was already off. She didn't really care about the human's in the camp, why would she, but she did care that none of them were slated to die that day. Not even her own mark that lay beside her, her breath coming in short gasps as the situation dawned on her slowly.

“Tamsin, if we kill them, if you kill them, their encampment is going to know-”

“You expect me to just sit here and watch as they get the same reception after they enter our camp? Maybe, oh just maybe, they'll get off a few shots before being taken down by the unawares. You really want that life on your hands, doc?” The human quieted beside her and Tamsin bit her lip, she was way too harsh on her. But this was what war was. It was harsh. And it wasn't at all pretty.

When the medic had been silent for a few more moments as Tamsin watched slowly as the jeep pass across the dirt road, she began to chant a small Icelandic dirge for the coming deceased, before she put her finger on the trigger. Slowing her breathing and just as before, stopping mid-breath, she aimed for the one target she knew to be in the car.

The jerk of the recoil bit into her arm, and Tamsin had just enough time to fire again, before the situation would change in the car drastically. Still watching through her scope, she saw briefly someone scream from the backseat as her first bullet bit into the driver's head, spraying the car's window with a gust of red blood, and her second digging itself into the passenger's head. She could have killed them both with the same shot, Tamsin knew, but that would be more... difficult. Tamsin had to be exact, making sure to kill everyone in that jeep, and if using more bullets than she really cared to, so be it.

Tamsin saw a man from the backseat, the jeep held a total of four targets, and since she couldn't get a clean shot, she simply aimed her rifle downward and fired another shot. The wheel of the front of the jeep seemed to explode from the bullet's impact, and just like that, the jeep began to tumble and roll across the desert floor. The occupants inside were jostled around, Tamsin saw through her scope, and just as it came to a rest, she saw a clear line of sight to the third enemy. Aiming clearly, even if the man's hands were above him and his head was bleeding, even though he was most likely dead, it didn't stop the valkyrie from firing a fourth shot into the jeep, making a small hole through the man's head.

_Just one more to go._

It was the waiting game now, Tamsin thought as she watched, her breath coming in languid breaths- Lewis', who had watched the entire fifteen seconds unfold in front of her using the binoculars, breath was coming out in small, gasping ones- as she watched the jeep closely. She knew, for a small fact, that the human's mind who was left in the car would be thinking if they could make a run toward cover. Or, at least, far enough away for her rifle to not reach.

He would be thinking, she thought, if he made one final attempt at victory, at life, and shoot out in every direction if he would get lucky somehow and kill his attacker.

But that wasn't going to happen, it wasn't the movies, and he wasn't the plucky hero.

So he would wait there, behind that jeep, until his adrenaline and fear got the better of him and he'd jump out of the protection of the overturned car, of his dead friend's in the jeep with their hands in the air like some twisted carnival ride, and he'd scream one last mortal scream before his head cavity blew open from a precise bullet that Tamsin the Valkyrie would deliver to him.

_And there it was._

The man jumped out of the car, his rifle above his head, and he was about to scream one last deathly scream, until the valkyrie delivered real death to him as she pulled the trigger. His head shot backward, his brain matter and small sprays of blood rushed out behind him, and almost immediately, almost laughably, his body dropped into the bloodied sand in less than a second.

Tamsin, who had not witnessed any emotion that washed over Lewis' face, swiftly pushed the safety back onto her rifle and pulled it across her left shoulder as she got up. Placing it in her left hand again, just in case another enemy jeep came their way, she looked down at a scared, breathless medic.

“Doc, I need you to get up. We need to warn the camp.”

“You shot them... all of them are... dead.”

“You've seen death before, doc. I know you have. We need to-”

“Yes, yes I have. But you... what are you to be able to do that without even batting an eye? The last man you killed... he couldn't have been older than seventeen.”

Tamsin's breath caught as the medic said 'thing' instead of 'who' but she shook her head and bent down. Getting her right hand under Lewis' left arm, she pulled her up swiftly. “We need to go now. We need to run now, okay?”

Lewis' eyes seemed to comprehend the order, to run, but her mind still reeled over the small boy that was lying dead in the sand. She would want to bury him later, Tamsin knew, if not all of the terrorists that she had killed. She shouldn't have taken her out there, she should have never been so ignorant. Lewis was a great warrior, but there was things in life one could do to become a tremendous warrior without having to take a life. Having to take a small boy's life.

In truth, Tamsin had not realized it was a boy that she had taken the life of. It hadn't even entered her mind. She wished only for a moment, before she pushed Lewis in front of her, that it had. Maybe if it had she would have...

Tamsin shook her head as she pushed Lewis again in front of her into a run.

Forgetting the thought and only continued to think of one thing, the one thing that could possibly save their lives and their encampments lives; she made her decision. They just ran.


	3. Burial

The funny, even laughable, thing about pulling the trigger and taking someone’s life, destroying everything that person would ever grow to become, was not that it was hard to pull the catch.  
To slip your finger over the trigger and pull.  
To release the small, lead, death bringing bullet from the barrel of a rifle.  
To watch as it exploded from the muzzle of a gun, how it’d break apart, and then squelch, burn, rip through someone’s body.  
No, it wasn’t that it was incredibly hard to pull the catch; to pull the trigger.  
It was that it was so laughably _easy._

Virtually anyone could do it!  
Young children see it as a way to entertain themselves, though even if the trigger they pull is plastic and laughter fills their heart every time they do, the intent is still there. They know what happens when you point and shoot a firearm at someone. They perhaps don’t understand the meaning of being ‘dead’ yet, and that’s the chilling part. Children learn how to fire weapons before truly understanding the repercussions of such actions.

+++  
Soldiers would, essentially, take away someone’s first dance; their days of laughter and of sadness, their days of hating their parents and loving them again. To pull the trigger meant to destroy everything a human life was going to become, that it was going to be shaped into. They would destroy the days that person had already lived, the good and the bad, the hits and spankings, and the discipline and love. All of it was taken away all in one single pull of a catch, of a trigger; it would be gone with a snap of the fingers.  
Not that Tamsin was snapping as she kept pushing Lewis to run faster, harder, to keep up the pace the soldier had set for them. She cursed herself as, when they had gotten to the oasis, she had not thought to count how many klicks they were from the encampment. They had been running for a good 20 minutes through the harsh sand biting at their faces, and only then did Tamsin recognize a few of the dirt paths they took.  
This was the exact spot where the soldier Rameriez had taken the bomb to the face and chest, a dark pool of what could have only be dried blood still stained the ground they ran across, which meant they were only about eight minutes from camp. The oasis was four klicks away, so far, and that meant, if Tamsin hadn’t have killed the occupants in that jeep, it had been only a matter of time before the car had come to the encampment. No doubt they had been looking for the well that the marines used on a daily basis, powered by the oasis a few miles away and assuring them a fresh water supply every day. It was probably all they wanted or needed…  
Shaking her head slightly at the thought, chastising herself for wanting to sympathize which such heartless and brutal human beings, she pushed Lewis again faster down the dirt road. They had to get to camp and warn their superior officer of what had happened. Or what could have happened if the terrorists found out why their patrol didn’t come back from their annual water run. Military forces were stretched to and far between of each other, and if even a small terrorist cell wanted to attack a camp, they would win easily.  
Somehow Tamsin had gotten in front of the medic, her long legs easily carrying her a greater distance in shorter leg pumps, and she heard a slight yelp and then scuffling as Lewis went down hard, her shoulder hitting the dirt road and her head banging off from it, just as the camp was coming into view. Eying how far away the camp was, then sighing and running back to her, Tamsin bent down swiftly, changing her rifle to her left hand, and hooked her right hand under the medic’s arm, after placing a soft hand on the injury the medic could have sustained. Seeing as no blood defiled the blonde’s hair, Tamsin was ready to get her up and running again from how close they were to the encampment.  
“We have to get to the sergeant. Come on, we’re almost there,” She soothed, trying to be kind to the medic as she placed the butt of her rifle into the dirt and sand of the road.  
“I can’t,” Lewis breathed, almost coughing up her parched throat.  
“Look, I will get you water when we get into camp, but you need to get up for me.” Tamsin could see the small trickles of sweat run down the sides of Lewis’ face and neck, down her back and legs, and she had to shake her head from the thoughts that permeated her mind. They were on a mission, not some stupid-  
“I’ve seen death, Rundstrom, just like you said.” Lewis did an effective job of snapping Tamsin out of her own thoughts, as she fully noticed how the medic had said her real name instead of ‘gunny’, and the valkyrie stayed silent as the blonde continued, “But I’ve never seen anyone, not one living soul, be so… heartless when taking lives. You didn’t even care. You _don’t_ care now.” Lewis was using up all her energy, her huffing breath, just to get out the sentences she had been thinking since they left the oasis and Tamsin did nothing to stop her.  
Emerald eyes peered down into brown ones; Tamsin was immobile, kneeled down beside her while the medic was on the ground, her hands placed firmly in the dirt as her legs ran out long behind her. They stared at each other, simply stared, for the longest time; one with wonder and anticipation and the other with cold assertion and sadness.  
Lewis was right, the valkyrie didn’t care about taking lives all that much. They were human, she was fae, and she was the deliverer of death. That’s just how it was, that is what she lived with, and she made peace with herself a long time ago. So why the hell was this blonde woman suddenly making her question all of that?  
“This is war, doc. That’s all there is to it. People, they’re animals here; merciless and aggressive. You, for one second, hesitate about pulling that trigger and you’re the one that’s going to end up in a body bag. It’s you or them; last man standing.” Tamsin said coldly, lifting Lewis to her feet. “Now the camp is right there, can you make it that far?”  
Lewis glanced up, her eyes still downcast, and she briefly calculated the time it’d take, how fast she needed to move, to get there. Nodding her head slowly, she was rewarded with a pat on the back and a small smile from the gunny.  
“Good, now come on hotpants.”  
+++  
Lewis followed quickly behind the gunny, they had finally gotten into camp and the blonde had been merciful and allowed her to go to the pump for water. The gunny had quickly placed her rifle into Lewis’ tent as she did so, before entering into the cool tent of their commanding officer. He was a strong, cold, an aggressive little man, Lewis observed as they entered and laid eyes on him. She had to hold back any type of inappropriately insulting thoughts from spewing out of her mouth, as she perceived the man to be just as tall as she was. Not that that was a bad thing, Lewis reflected silently as she looked up toward the ceiling of the tent, as it was portraying that the man did not have a great dietary system set up when he was younger.  
He was at his desk, small bits of paper grasped tightly in his hand, and Lewis immediately stood at attention as they stopped just between the desk and the flaps of the door. She eyed the gunny ruefully when the blonde didn’t stand at any type of attention, and she secretly wished she could be more like her. Instead of following the rules, she could take in a long drink of air instead of trying to catch her breath with her chest out and her arms behind her back. Then again, Lewis thought slowly, that would mean taking lives and not-  
“At ease,” The sergeant finally said, looking at the medic and the gunny in turn, pushing Lewis out of her own thoughts thankfully. If Rundstrom’s actions didn’t get her a stern talking to, Lewis didn’t know what would. “What do you need? And please tell me why you thought it necessary to barge into my tent.”  
Lewis felt relieved and she tried to suck in a gulp of air quickly. Looking over at the gunny, she raised her eyebrow in question; who was going to start off?  
“Mastery Sergeant, we’ve got some information about a possible terrorist cell in this area,” The gunny said, looking sharply at the commanding officer. She didn’t seem to care for the chain of command, and she showed as much when she didn’t address the sergeant as she should have. Though, Lewis thought, at least she addressed him by his rank.  
The man placed his papers down on his desk quickly and folded his hands. Every harsh comment he was about to give them flew out the small window in the far side of the tent and he said, “Continue.”  
The gunny looked over at Lewis and back at the commanding officer. “I ordered the petty officer to show me a shooting range so that I could fire my weapon. It’s been awhile, you understand.” The gunny looked over at Lewis, almost daring her to say something about her lie to their commanding officer; Rundstrom had not ordered her whatsoever, and when she didn’t, the blonde continued.  
“While I was aiming, I discovered a small jeep with four occupants inside, coming straight for the camp. This place hasn’t been established here for long, I assume, as they still thought they could still retrieve water from the underground well here. To keep the marines safe from a surprise attack, I fired and terminated the hostiles. There were four casualties,” The gunny finished, looking square into the sergeant’s eyes, yet another breech of protocol.  
Silence fell over the tent, the sergeant’s stare bounced around from the medic to the gunny. Lewis saw how he gripped his folded hands, the knuckles being massaged by coarse fingers.

“I will deal with your insubordination later,” The sergeant said, looking directly at Lewis. Even in the face of possible attack, he was still the commanding officer and he would dish out punishment as he saw fit. Punishment which seemed to solely be concentrated towards the Petty Officer.  
Lewis kept her gaze down, hiding the regret swirling in her big, brown orbs. She knew she shouldn’t have shown the gunny the shooting range, she should have told her no, but she had done it anyways. She had broken protocol, something the blonde held very dear to her heart, as she rarely broke the rules or even thought about it, and she cursed herself for doing so. Was she that weak? So frail, that the sight of the gorgeous blonde woman erased any remnants of her resolve away?  
“I told you, I ordered her to show me,” Rundstrom cut in, her eyes burning into the sergeant’s.  
“And you will address me as ‘sir’ when speaking to me,” The sergeant cut in, aiming a pointed index finger towards the gunny.  
“I’m sorry,” The gunny continued as if she hadn’t been rudely interrupted, “isn’t that what the military teaches people; to follow orders? She followed them to the letter, so if there’s going to be any type of punishment in the face of a freakin’ terrorist cell attack, I’m the one that’s going to receive it. Is that alright with you, _sir_?” The word usually used a sign of respect was now nothing but disrespected, as Tamsin uttered it with sarcasm.  
The gunny shot daggers at the sergeant and Lewis had to stop herself from retreating backwards. The gunny was strong, she had showed her strength when she had dispatched the cell in the jeep, and when she had made the private back off of her that morning. But to see her going up against a commanding officer, someone who could have her court marshaled, for someone as small as the medic… she simply could not understand the woman’s approach.

Lewis knew she wasn’t worth it, wasn’t worth the effort, because she wholeheartedly thought that she wasn’t good enough, and in her mind she wasn’t good enough for a lot of things.  
Before she could step into the conversation, their commanding officer spoke, “I’m not dragging this unit into a death match because a new gunny decided to have a goddamn happy trigger finger. I’ll talk to command to try to smooth this over. You’re on patrol until that happens, you get me, maggot.”  
“Sure, I get you, dick,” Rundstrom, thankfully, whispered the last word and the sergeant hadn’t heard it as she turned her head away. Looking at Lewis, she nodded toward the tent flap, telling her she was about to leave.  
“Dismissed.”  
+++  
“What a fucking ass,” Tamsin said harshly as she grabbed her rifle from Lewis’ tent. That was, however, after they had made a thorough check through the medical tent for any spiders. My spidey sense isn’t tingling, she thought as she she turned to Lewis after picking up her rifle, swinging it in the air then tightly grasping it in her hand as she continued, “We tell him about a possible terrorist cell and what does he do? Send his best shot on patrol! What a fucking ass,” She repeated, kicking the frame of the cot with a combat boot as she restrained herself from yelling.  
“Gunny, where are you going?”  
Tamsin looked around and saw a small medic fidgeting with her fingers as she sat on her own cot; it almost seemed like she had cowered in the corner. The valkyrie quickly checked herself, she had no idea why, and she calmed instantly. Coming over to the blonde, she swiftly placed her rifle down to her left on the cot, and patted the medic’s leg.  
“Following orders, or whatever,” She said, looking toward the opposing wall as she placed her elbows on her knees, cracking her knuckles as she did.  
“I-will you- I mean…”  
“Words, doc, words are very useful.”  
“I want to bury the bodies,” Lewis said, her eyes pinned to the ground as if the dirt was the most interesting thing in the room.  
“You want to what now?”  
“That boy, he couldn’t be over seventeen years old, he deserves a burial. Not a large one, we can bury them right where they… died, but please, we need to bury them.”  
Tamsin picked up her rifle quickly, strapping it across her shoulder as she stood facing the medic, and had to keep her voice from a higher octave as she tried not to yell, “Are you fucking kidding me? We can’t go out there to bury them! They wouldn’t give our kind- soldiers who risk their lives for their country- the same respect.”  
“It doesn’t matter, gunny, if they would give us the same respect. Please, I-”  
“It’s going to be dark soon. You won’t make it back out there before the sun sets. You’ll be stuck out there with God knows what that go hunting in the night. No, you’re not going back out. It’s too dangerous.”  
“As much as I appreciate your concern Gunny, I know it’s the right thing to do. Please, try to understand.”  
“No,” Tamsin said, forcefully, as she exited the tent, Lewis running at her heels. “I mean it, doc. You’re not going. I’ll be back soon and if you’re not here…” Tamsin left the sentence open as she walked away, her rifle slung over her shoulder and her head down as she shook it violently.

_Who does she think she is? A good Samaritan? She’s gonna get herself killed if she keeps letting her heart do the thinking._  
Walking out of camp and into the swelling heat of the day; it had just hit late afternoon. If Tamsin peered at the sky, she would see the sun beginning to fall; bleeding into the endless dunes of sand. She quickly placed her rifle in her hands as she walked a good ways from camp, ready for anything was the motto, and she looked around languidly. Sighing and looking up at the sun, glad that she had grabbed one of the medic’s hats before she did, pushing it atop her head and her messy bun, she wondered how hot it would get that second night.  
Tamsin let out a disgruntled sigh, again, as she found a small area to sit by the dirt road just a few meters away from camp. Placing the butt of her gun down onto the ground, and leaning her weight onto it as she sat down, she placed it in her lap gingerly. Placing her elbows just below her knee caps, just above where her rifle lay in her lap, she put her hands on her face, slowly swiping away the small strands of hair that cascaded down into her eyes.  
What had she done? Why did she have to ask the medic to come out with her? She should have just asked where the oasis was and made the blonde stay in the encampment. Maybe then the valkyrie would have been able to forgive herself. Brand spanking new in this unit, and she was already stirring trouble, and for what? To protect the pretty, blonde medic of course.  
It wasn’t that she cared, no, Tamsin thought. She _shouldn’t_ care, but she did. The woman was just so… pure. She had seen death, she had witnessed it and made companions with it, and yet her heart, her mind, her skilled surgical hands were at peace with it. She saw the hatred and evil in the world every single day and yet her very essence was that of purity. That was why she was being taken to Valhalla, that was why Tamsin herself- one of the strongest valkyries- was there to take her. Lewis A. Lauren was a warrior of her craft at healing and she still kept the purity that the valkyrie’s themselves have. Cold assertion, the maidens would never be deterred from their objective, their mark, and that was why they were called in whenever a job needed to be done.  
So why was this human any different?  
Why did Tamsin have to calm her heart and breathing before simply laying her emerald eyes on the medic? Why did the valkyrie care so much about what Lewis had been feeling witnessing the deaths of the individuals in the jeep? Why the hell did she care so much after meeting this pure woman for only two days.  
Her rifle grew heavy in her lap and she looked down at the brutal killing machine. One shot, in any part of the body, and your life would be taken from you. That was why she had chosen it, Tamsin thought as she placed her hands on the rifle’s smooth body, pressing the butt of it into the sand again as she stood it up in the dimming sunlight. It was one of the strongest rifles that she could ever carry herself, that was why she had asked for it specifically, and it was all hers. Her own personal death machine.  
She remembered when wars were fought and won with steel only. When the strength and will of any man was far more powerful than any advanced military technology they have today; it was noble and a true achievement to be proud of. Warriors then pushed their bodies to the absolute edge, a test of endurance. Now, you let the technology do it for you. In the blink of an eye you have a million dead people on your hands. Easy as pie. You pull a trigger and it’s wham, bam, thank you ma’am.  
And it was the thing that had scared the human when the carnage it wrought was witnessed.  
Shaking her head, she had to get a hold of herself, Tamsin looked back the way of camp. The sun was just beginning to hit the earth and it’d be dark in less than thirty minutes. She had been away on “patrol” for a good amount of time, and after standing up and wiping her ass, she quickly jogged back into camp, her rifle swinging on her shoulder the entire time.  
“So I’m sorry or whatever about my total-” Tamsin was saying as she walked into the medical tent, completely ready to own up to her idiocy and harsh tones, but stopped short as she saw the room was covered with a blanket of darkness. Looking around she shouted, “Lewis,” and did a double take out the flaps of the tent after grabbing a small shovel. Knowing exactly where the stupid human was trying to go.  
+++  
Lewis dragged her arm across her upper lip as she worked tirelessly in the hard packed earth. She had not thought it would take as long as it did to get back to the carnage that was the overturned jeep, but as she set out with just a flashlight, her issued shovel, and her pistol clipped to her side, she wished she would have listened to the gunny. She shook her head and tried to rid all thought of the tall blonde out of her mind, but quickly failed, and gave in to wonder instead how or why she felt the way she did about said individual.  
They had known each other for little over a day, two if she counted her blackout at the bar, and yet for some reason she felt an undeniable connection to her. As if they were always meant to be… something. But that was absurd, she told herself as she smiled slightly - her signature feigned smile - and looked up at the sky quickly. Of course the gunny and herself would never be “something”. This was war, as the blonde had said to her that day, and war wasn’t conducive for… relationships. Nor were they a good foundation to build such important relationships on.  
“Albert Eisenstein,” Lewis whispered to herself as she rolled her eyes. Now she was thinking about relationships? What next?  
Her mind should be on the grave she was digging, on the words that she was going to say for the boy and the others in the jeep after she’d finishing shoveling dirt over their resting place. Covering her nose when she had gotten there, bodies out in the beating sun for a day didn’t do well for the smell, Lewis had pulled all of the men out of the jeep and laid them side by side to each other. She had seen death and the small holes; oozing blood trailing down their faces didn’t bother her as much of the memory of being on the opposing end that ended their lives. Shaking her grave thoughts from her head, there were still real graves to be dug.  
She had just gotten the first grave semi-dug, it wasn’t far enough down to protect from animals, but it was a desert and no real large animals would be able to dig up the body, when she heard a noise not to far from her position. Looking up, multiple strands fell in front of her eyes, with her shovel raised slightly in her hand, she stopped her breathing as she tried to hear the world around her, her sight greatly impacted by the blackness of the night. The buzz of small insects around her bright flashlight that bathed her body and the pit she was digging with light, the caw of some unknown bird in the sky, everything seemed to be fine and she would have gone back to her work but then- there! Scuffling, as if someone was hurrying along the dark desert, maybe, just maybe, trying to find something, or someone Lewis thought slowly.  
Quickly dropping her shovel, Lewis moved faster than she thought she could, lunging her upper body out of the pit and grabbing the flashlight, dragging it into the grave with her. She turned it into her body, hiding the flash, as she tried the switch to turn it off. Her panic got the better of her, shit, shit, shit…she just couldn’t find the goddamned button.  
“Come on, come on,” She whispered, trying to find it, there, it was right- _click!_ Lewis froze as a beam of light washed over her from above. She closed her eyes tight, hating her ignorance, wishing she could have listened to the gunny, and wondered if the armed guard would kill her there or have a little fun with her first-  
“Lewis,” A sweet voice asked, a voice the medic knew all too familiarly.  
“Rundstrom!” The medic was more relieved than she could possibly fathom. That was, however, until the gunny began to scold her as she dropped with grace down next to her in the pit.  
“What the hell were you thinking? Didn’t I tell you to stay in camp! No, don’t answer, just get your ass out of this grave. It’s not your time yet.” The woman fumed, her light flashing onto the ground and around the pit as she waved her hands aggressively around her. “What the hell are you smiling at!” The gunny looked down at the woman, her green ones- how did Lauren never notice how beautiful green they were- bore into her brown ones as she smiled slightly.  
“I-I just, I was-” Lewis was trying to find words that she couldn’t grasp. She was elated, happy, relieved that it had been the gunny who had found her, who had thought enough about her to come find her to begin with. She had never felt such a strong emotion, she was always forgotten, always left behind, but not by this woman she barely knew. The woman in front of her who was staring at her like she had lost her mind, the woman Lewis had felt a strong connection to, so much so that she wanted to fling her arms around her and hug her. “You came to find me… thank you,” Lewis said finally, wishing her words held more of her inner turmoil of emotions.  
The gunny raised an eyebrow, turned her head slightly as she opened her mouth and shut it quickly, and said, “Oh… yeah… cool.”  
Lewis let loose a small burst of laughter and put her hand to her mouth to hide it. The gunny looked over, and smirked, a small one but it was there. Looking down, Lewis saw the woman have her “enchanted” rifle in her left hand and a small shovel in her right; the flashlight she had dropped on the ground and the medic briefly wondered how the gunny could carry the two items in one hand across the desert.  
“Did… did you come here to help me dig?”  
The gunny looked down at her right hand and the item it held and she shrugged slightly. “I guess. Now that I’m here I can’t just sit and stare at you now can I?”  
The medic smiled again, this time containing her small laughter, as she looked down, allowing the strands of hair that escaped her pony tail to fall into her eyes.  
“Might as well get started since now it’ll take less time,” Lewis said, a smile on her lips at the gunny’s sacrifice.  
+++  
“So tell me why a petty officer, probably right out of a school and basic, is out here with a marine unit,” Tamsin said after awhile of digging. They had gotten the hole much wider and deeper and it was just a few more shovel fulls that they could set all of the bodies down into it side by side. It wasn’t in the valkyrie’s mind to ask right away, or ever in actuality, but as they had been working so hard and Lewis was huffing and taking a cooling sip from her canteen, Tamsin wanted to lighten the mood.  
Lewis swallowed her water, a bit too harshly Tamsin saw, and she tried not to cough. Was the question really that personal?  
“I-um- it’s not what you’d call a happy story,” Lewis said, placing her canteen next to one of the flashlights, the other was in the pit with them, that was above the grave pit. “I mean, I was assigned,” She reprimanded herself.  
“A petty officer second class wouldn’t be assigned out in the field,” Tamsin said matter of factly. She wasn’t trying to pry or destroy the little barrier the medic had placed to protect herself, but she wouldn’t stand to be lied to either. It was one thing for a petty officer to be assigned to a unit right out of school, it was another entirely when they had a ranking that the medic did. When Lewis didn’t answer she sighed and said, “Fine, if you don’t want to tell me why you were assigned to the unit, tell me why you don’t like firing your gun.”  
“What makes you think I don’t like firing my-”  
“Maybe because you were scared, like a little girl getting caught with her first condom, when I asked you to shoot that spider in our tent.”  
Lewis had caught how the gunny had said ‘our’ instead of ‘your’ but brushed it aside as a slip of the tongue. The connection, the feeling that the medic got in the pit of her stomach, grew stronger as she tried to tell herself to lie to the gunny again, to keep the secret that she had kept for so long, but it cascaded over here like soothing water and she felt the truth pouring from her before she even began to speak.  
“I dislike firearms,” She said, trying to hold back the wave of emotion that came crashing into her heart and mind.  
“Why’s that?” Tamsin pressed, her shovel digging into the wall of the pit to make it a small amount larger.  
“B-because my parents were murdered by them.”  
Tamsin immediately stopped shoveling, she hadn’t known about Lewis’ past- she didn’t know about any of her mark’s past until the memories cascaded over them both as she raised them up to Valhalla- and she looked over toward the medic, her arms around her chest as she looked down. “Shit, Doc. How’d it happen,” Tamsin breathed. She didn’t know why she was feeling so impacted from the bit of news told to her, but it made her breath catch as she felt the death that washed over Lewis as the woman remembered her past.  
Lewis rested her back on the solid dirt wall behind her, and she bent her head forward as she tugged on her fingers. “When I was younger, my parents worked for an organization that… they really shouldn’t have been working for. They were scientists, incredibly intelligent and innovative scientists. They were developing a serum that gave the subject a rapid, and non-biological, boost to their whole system; increasing strength, healing, reflexes, thought process and much more; a ‘super-soldier’ of sorts.” Lewis stopped as she collected her thoughts and Tamsin stepped in.  
“How old were you?”  
“I was approximately five years, two days, seven hours, thirty-five minutes, and-” The look in the gunny’s eyes made her stop, smile, and continue, “I was five years old. They brought me to work occasionally when they couldn’t find a babysitter for me. It was wonderful, all the shining surfaces, the pretty concoctions. I wanted to be just like them when I grew up.” Lewis smiled slightly as she looked down again, her memories flooding over her. When she finally got them collected she continued, “They didn’t know that their experiments, what they thought were being used for good, were actually being used and tested on human subjects. It wasn’t until I joined the military, did some digging, did I found out that my parents were actually sent there by the CIA to investigate.”  
“The CIA?”  
“I know, it sounds crazy… I mean, why would the CIA need spies infiltrated in there? They must have partly known what the experiments were, or that they were illegal. My parents had been placed there to try to find out what all the experiments entailed, but when they realized they were working on real human test subjects…their conscience got the better of them.”  
“What happened?”  
Lewis sighed and looked into the gunny’s eyes. “They wanted to save them, wanted to end this madness. So when they had attempted to release one of the test subjects, he went crazy, took the gun my father had on him, and shot them both. I was there that day and the crazed man would have shot me, the barrel of the gun was aimed right at my forehead, but something stopped him.”  
“What was it?”  
“I-I don’t know,” Lewis seemed confused, her brow knit as she tried to remember, “I don’t know what it was but when I opened my eyes, I was back in my home again. Like I was moved there but I never fainted or lost consciousness. I think…” The petty officer shrugged slightly and looked over at Tamsin, obviously uncaring about the small detail from her past.  
Or mind blocked, Tamsin thought as she watched as Lewis seemed to forget about the final of their conversation just after talking about it.  
Tamsin was about to ask another question, maybe along the lines of Lewis’ upbringing, but stopped as she felt a strong wind gust above them. Turning slightly, she tried to catch what it carried on it, but couldn’t in time. Shushing Lewis as the woman asked what was wrong, Tamsin looked out into the darkness of the desert, trying to hear, see, smell, or sense anything she could. A gust of wind wasn’t abnormal out there, but to that caliber…  
She eyed where her rifle sat, just outside of the pit near the Lewis' flashlight, and she cursed herself at her stupidity. The valkyrie should have kept it in the pit with them.  
“Lewis, I want you to-” Tamsin began, trying to warn the woman to get out of the pit quickly and run back to camp, but she was immediately stunted as something hard cut into her throat. She watched as Lewis tried to back up further, but her back was already pressed against the pit’s dirt packed wall, and she couldn’t move. Tamsin reached out a hand to her when a man, who wore the same as the dead individuals laying outside of the jeep, reached down and pulled a screaming Lewis out of the pit quickly.  
Tamsin tried to let out a scream when the man had gotten on top of Lewis, her legs kicking out frantically under the weight of him, her hair falling across her face as it had been torn from her pony tail, and her head was snapped to the left as the man hit her hard across the cheek. The wire, however, choked back her scream of fury, and just after she saw Lewis’ beautiful features quickly covered by a black bag.  
Before she could even try to take out the man behind her, to scramble out of the pit and retrieve her rifle to kill all those who were too stupid to oppose a valkyrie, her head whipped to the side as she was punched hard; and she had just enough consciousness left to see another man, a considerably older man, jump into the pit with her. Taking her chin in his hand, he looked her over and spoke in a language Tamsin had yet to master, as he moved her head back and forth across the harsh wire that cut into her throat. She felt warm blood trickle down where the wire cut her, and she refused to whimper in pain, refused to show any sign of weakness.  
When he finally stopped, the valkyrie spit out saliva filled blood into the man's face and her emerald eyes burned.

“If you hurt her, cocksucker, I’m going to-”  
Tamsin’s words were cut off as the man let go of her chin, grimaced as he brought his hand up to wipe away her blood, and brought a hard fist into the left side of Tamsin’s face. Before she could do anything else, the cotton black bag descended over her eyes, and she lost consciousness. 


	4. Defender

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: This chapter has very, very, minor torture scenes and allusions, and mentions, towards torture and rape. If you don't want to read that, if it'll trigger anything for you, please do not read this chapter. Thank you.

Copper: almost like a metallic taste of some sort. They were being shoved, moved mercilessly, down a hallway that smelled like copper. The smell permeated her nostrils, her pores, her very being. It filled her with dread for what would probably happen to both females down in this dank and molded place. She wondered briefly if their sergeant would notice they were missing of if he thought they were AWOL from their disciplinary hearings. She rolled her eyes at his presumed ignorance.  
Turning her head slightly to the left just as they passed a doorway, Tamsin knew it to be an entryway by the way the air seemed to be cooler from in there, the valkyrie could hear the slight drip, drip, drip of some sort of water source. Maybe, instead of a water source, it was a simple a bucket that had been turned over for some reason; a reason Tamsin did not want to think about just that moment. Her sense of smell picked up the decay around them: the way the walls smelt as if they were literally rotting away, the air around them stale and broken as if it had been rusting for some time.  
Someone tripped beside her; a female's gasp came out. Men shouting. Tamsin turned her head to the right at the fallen female's gasp as a hard boot was taken to her midsection. The valkyrie growled and said an unforgivable curse that started with C and ended in T. Her black-bagged cheek was slapped harshly with a fist and she felt blood in her mouth. If only she could spit it into her captor's face. The female beside her was picked up again, probably by the shoulders as she refused to move any further, and Tamsin felt the back of her legs being hit again to move. She complied, slowly, but she complied.  
The men around them, Tamsin had counted at least four, spoke playfully, laughingly, to each other, happy that they had caught their prize, no doubt. Tamsin had none. They were in for a hell of a night, and she was sure that her mark and herself were probably not going to make it out alive. She had no illusions about any of it.  
+++  
Aleed Marabeen brought a hard boot into the petite woman's stomach after she had tripped on nothing but air. He didn't think the foul woman would pull a knife, not that his men hadn't already checked them... thoroughly, but to further discourage both constituents from trying to escape, he had to show brute strength. Not that the man wanted to hurt these two females, of course not, but he had to... he had to.  
"If you hurt her again, I'll kick your fucking asses you cunt-"  
Aleed turned and quickly brought his fist into the taller woman's face to shut her up. He was not in the mood for more of her threats and he needed to show her as much. She instantly quieted after his strike and he held back a sigh as his subordinate kicked the back of the woman's leg to get her moving again. The petite woman, Lewis he remembered the taller calling her, was pulled back up by her shoulders and pushed sharply ahead.  
Following the rowdy men in the room, he mimicked his comrades, pushing his palm roughly against the woman's shoulder, shoving her forward into the room as well. His dark pupils were cast downward, following the men's footsteps; the one whom was charged to keep the smaller woman in check, Hafsa, dragged her like she was but a mere bag of ruined cloth, towards the rectangular wooden table idly sitting in the middle of the room, old and worn. The others, most of which were individuals he grew up with, sat on a small round table at the other end of the room. A table littered with empty bottles of what was probably strong alcohol and bits and pieces of what looked like cigars.  
Once happy, these little boys had been running around outside, shooting each other with plastic weapons and plastic darts had grown up into bitter and hateful men, despising what Americans had done to their country and how they had soiled their image, how nonchalantly they slapped down such derogatory terms on each and every one of them as if all eggs came from the same basket. It wasn't surprising, he thought, if you'd seen what they had done in their own country.  
He was brought out of his own childish thoughts when the petite woman's hips banged against the table sitting in the middle of the room due to Hafsa's body pounding into her from behind. Her breath hitched, and she let out a yelp of pain as the man's rough hands reached under the black bag and grasped a fistful of hair, and whimpered slightly as Hafsa moved her legs to open wider for easier access. The bottles from the table fell over, their empty remnants making it easy to fall and shatter on the ground, and Aleed made a move, pulling out his knife as he crossed the small dank room.  
Aleed ignored the taller woman's remarks as she, yet again, threatened the men and instead of going to her, he made a b-line toward Hafsa. Swiftly pulling on the boy's full head of black hair, he quickly let the large knife he held gleam menacingly on the boy's throat, daring him to continue what despicable act he was about to achieve.  
"You will have your time, my brother," Aleed whispered in the boy's ear, making sure no one else in the room could possibly hear him, "you will have your time." Letting go of the boy's head and sheathing his wicked knife, he patted his shoulder gruffly as the boy turned, his dark eyes questioning but compliant with his wishes, and he immediately released the petite woman. Smiling slightly, Aleed looked over at the taller woman, who was standing in front of the chair she would soon be sat in, and he growled slightly as he moved towards her.  
The Israeli native met his own prisoner in the middle of the room and kicked the back of her knee as she pushed her down harshly on the small chair that had been bolted down into the cold, cement floor. Another string of swear words flew out of the woman's mouth, whom growled as she attempted to dislodge herself from his bruising grip. Pulling both of her arms back around the chair, he used some discarded rope to bind her hands to it, tightening them tight enough to leave nasty marks. He then moved to her feet, which was a bad move considering how fiery the woman was, and received a sharp kick to the face.  
Swearing in his native tongue, Aleed threw a punch into the woman's stomach, whom coughed out painfully and doubled over in pain; her hair, which was let loose from the scuffle in the pit, rained down from beneath the bag as she coughed into her lap.  
After he had successfully tied both of her legs together, he ripped the bag from her head and a sickening noise rang in the room, as his knuckles came into contact with the bones in her jaw; crimson liquid painting his hands, his own blood mixing with hers as he wiped the dripping liquid from the gash just above his eye.  
As his eyes locked with the woman's bright, green ones, Aleed perceived anger, yet there was something else shining in them, something he had seen in very few people. The blonde soldier was holding back, and this was clearly readable if anyone with eyes noticed how tense her neck was, how tightly her jaw was clenched, how she would flick her eyes to the petite woman's hindered gaze and back toward Aleed.  
Yet she had no weapons, the powerful rifle they had procured from the pit was sitting idly in one of his men's laps sitting at the oval table, and they had checked her thoroughly and found no other life ending weapon on her. So how, how was she giving off this familiar air? Shaking his head, he slapped her again, wishing with all his might he could just wipe that look out of her eyes.  
What they were doing to these women was senseless brutality perhaps, yet if he didn't comply what would they do to this family, what would they do to him? Something which Aleed didn't want to think about, never want to see happen. He never and will never agree with the full hostile occupation of his country, though disgust for Americans wasn't the only reason why he had joined this group. They offered protection to his family, food and a roof over their head. To him, that was the only thing that mattered in this world. But that protection didn't come swiftly enough, he thought as he remembered the dead in the overturned jeep. It didn't come fast enough.  
He noticed how the soldier's protective gaze never left the other prisoner. How, with every little movement, her emerald orbs would jump right back onto her, her eyebrows twitching slightly as she did so. They were friends too, he assumed, friends whom just like him, had joined a group reflecting their virtue, what they wanted to fight for. But what kind of virtue would American pigs have? He scoffed as he thought of answers to his own question as he looked at the blonde woman sitting defiantly opposite him.  
"You," The man spoke, sharply nodding his head at the captive Valkyrie, "your camp, you will tell us where it is."  
Baring her teeth like a lion about to devour their prey, the woman leaned forward slowly as she gave her version of an answer. "Eat a dick-" Blood flew from her mouth from yet another punch and she let her head hang for a moment, licking the tangy liquid freely dripping from the corner of her lips.  
"Where is it?!" Bending his knees, he leaned forward and curled his large fingers around the back of the chair. Gripping the woman's face, fingers digging in the crevice of her jaw, Aleed pushed her head sideways until their gaze met.  
A smirk appeared on her lips as she spoke, using the information she was able to give out while in captivity, as stated by law. "Rundstrom, A. Tamsin; Gunnery Serge-" Oxygen left her abruptly as a hand gripped her neck tightly. She could hear the Doctor's panicked pleas, she could tell even with the bag over her face that Tamsin was being harmed, which were followed by a loud smack and cry of agony.  
"Tell me!"  
As the pressure from her throat was lifted just enough for her to be able to speak, the Valkyrie flared her nostrils, the same smug look on her face as she recited her serial number: "Two, three, seven-argh." Hacking and coughing, her gaze was never lifted from the man's dark eyes as he squeezed her throat once more. "Ninety…eight…six...sev-"  
"Enough!" Aleed shouted as he released the woman's throat and crossed the room to join Hafsa and the other prisoner. Ripping off the hood from her head, her hair cascading around her as she blinked rapidly trying to get her eyes to adjust, he grabbed the woman's face with both of his hands and turned it towards the bloodied and bruised Valkyrie.  
"She means something to you does she?"  
"Don't you fucking put your hands on her, you slimy fuck!" The woman's voice was deep and rough, no doubt from the force exercised on it earlier, but oh was it commanding.  
Her reaction, however, was just was Aleed was looking for; what makes her tick? It seems as if he had found it. "You will talk." The words were thick with his accent. Wearing a grin, he made eye contact with one of his comrades sitting around the oval table at the side of the room. The man quickly stood and came over, bottle of alcohol in hand and a cigar at his lips. Aleed slowly took the burning cigar from his mouth, patted his shoulder, and the man returned to the table, lighting up a new one. Aleed turned to the valkyrie and said, "Last chance."  
Tamsin couldn't do it. She couldn't divulge any information no matter how her heart tore her in two. If her mind was thinking, truly thinking, she would have rationalized with herself the importance of her job. The importance of remembering the held hostage doctor was her mark, who she was meant to take to the afterlife after she died, the blonde was no one to Tamsin. She wasn't supposed to be anyone to her. And yet here she was, yelling and screaming across the room, her wrists biting into the restraints on the chair for release; to get to the doctor's side.  
"Your choice," Aleed said, looking down at the petite woman he held. Grabbing her left arm swiftly from her side, she yelped and pleaded with him as he brought it up onto the table, making sure to keep her fingers splayed. He never once broke eye contact with the valkyrie when he brought the burning tip of the cigar down, hard, onto the middle of the doctor's hand.  
The doctor had no idea how much it would hurt, she was a healer not a warrior, and she immediately let out a scream of agony as Aleed turned the cigar in crescent circles around the woman's hand.  
"Stop it, God damn it, stop," Tamsin cried, trying to force her restraints to loosen as she bucked at them, her hair flying into her eyes as her body jerked forward, trying to get out of them and to the doctor's side.  
"Who attacked my convoy?" Aleed asked, his eyes still on Tamsin, his hand flicking away the spent cigar.  
"What?" Tamsin was flabbergasted at how quickly he changed his questioning mindset.  
"Who. Attacked. My. Convoy?" He spoke every word deliberate, making sure Tamsin heard and understood every word.  
Tamsin's eyes flicked to Lewis', was she really going to tell them, but she was brought out of her reverie when Aleed barked with venom and quickly jerked Lewis backward by the arm.  
"You will talk," He repeated as he harshly pulled the protesting Doctor, who was holding her palm protectively to her chest, out of the room with his subordinate, and out of sight.  
"Where are you taking her?" Tamsin yelled after the man, but received nothing but silence as an answer. Turning to the men around her, who were drinking and smoking like they were celebrating the Fourth of July, she repeated her question: "Where is he taking her?"  
What she received as an answer was a round of rowdy laughs as the comrades spoke with each other in their native tongue. Infuriated, Tamsin attempted to break free of her bounds, moving her whole body in an attempt to break the thick rope. The material burned her skin at first and then drew blood as it pressed harder and harder into the soft flesh of her wrists. She then used her legs to push the chair up, yet the bolts held it down firmly.  
Settling down, the woman took a deep breath, her infuriating hair falling yet again into her eyes, before powering her legs and thighs upwards twice, causing the bolts to loosen slightly; though, this caught the attention of the terrorists. One of them stood up, burning cigar between his lips, fingers wrapped around a glass filled with amber liquid.  
"You, stay still." His accent thicker than that of Aleed's, the man emptied his glass in the woman's face the alcohol penetrating the gashes on her face and burning the tender skin.  
Putting her head back, Tamsin cringed and let out a growl as she, once again, attempted to dislodge the chair from its metal restraints. Her whole face was numb; she hadn't felt the man's large hand cupping her face until she saw the glow of the cigar from the corner of her eye.  
She was a Valkyrie, a powerful warrior capable of casting death upon a village, town, even a large city. Tamsin had strict orders not to use her powers in the presence of humans as to not expose the Fae. But what good was being so powerful if she couldn't even take out this ragtag group? She knew if that cigar touched her, she'd light up quickly with the alcohol on her face, and she wondered if this contributed to the "only in certain situations" category the merman had told her about while in the jeep to the encampment.  
How she wished she could turn back the clock and walk into camp as if it were her first day. To never have asked Lewis for the bar, to have simply ignored the woman in her entirety until the day came that she was slated to die. It would all have been easier. She wouldn't have given a shit that the petite blonde woman was just dragged away from her, whimpering and trying to look behind her as if Tamsin would miraculously free herself from her bonds and save the doctor's life.  
Anyone with a heart would have had some reaction to another woman being dragged away from them, presumably to be tortured, Tamsin reminded herself stupidly as the cigar light came closer to her eye.  
Baring her teeth like the savage her captors were, she said, "Go ahead, make my day. Do it, come on, do it!"  
The man huffed out a breath, looked back toward his buddies and said, "سخيف الأميركيين."* His friends looked over and laughed simultaneously while they all raised glasses to him. The gruff looking man looked back toward Tamsin, laughed in her face once again, and brought the back of his hand hard across her cheek. "Your friend," He said, looking at his reddened knuckles, "will not fare too good. We take bet to see how long she last."  
"Last at what?" Tamsin's breath came in shallower breaths as she tore her eyes from the man's smirk and looked at the door the petty officer was dragged out of.  
"You American's call it, uh, waterboard?" His voice rose up at the end, like some type of perverse way of questioning her, and he smiled down at Tamsin as he knelt in front of her, his arms settling on the chair's arm. Looking down at her chest, his lips were brought up into a smile and he trailed his middle finger down the side of Tamsin's neck and it hooked onto the chain there, reaching in unnecessarily farther down between her breasts than he needed to.  
The terrorist brought out the dog tags Tamsin wore, that stated her name, blood type, and everything the trauma surgeons needed to know to identify the honorable warriors in the field, and looked at them wonderingly. Smiling back up toward her, he ripped the tags from her neck quickly, jerking her head forward, and stood erect as he raised them up to the light to see them better. Shrugging a little and then groaning, the man turned around and flung them onto the rectangular table as if it was trash to be thrown away.  
Tamsin wanted to kill him.  
The man turned back around and took back up his position opposite of the valkyrie, bending down and leaning in close, so close Tamsin could headbutt him if she wanted, and whispered, "I say she will not last five minutes."  
"She's tougher than you think," Tamsin whispered back, getting in closer to the man's face, her green eyes never leaving his brown ones.  
"Then I will change to ten, yes?"  
"Oh yes." Tamsin smirked then as the situation dawned on her, the proximity her captor was to her, and bared her teeth, growling like a savage animal before going in for the man's throat.  
Sharp canines sunk in first, the others following suit as they tore and shredded the terrorist's jugular. Thick, crimson liquid coated both the soldier's mouth and the victim's neck. Something so bitter had never tasted sweeter to the Valkyrie as she heard the men's ruckus laughter turn to screams and shouts of terror, and she smiled wickedly as she bit down harder into the terrorist's neck.  
Pulling back, making sure to pull out a large chunk with her, blood dripped down from her lips to her chin, and with a wicked smirk she watched his blood practically spurt out like a fountain. Just before Tamsin powered her upper body forward and slammed her forehead against the top of his head, she had the brilliant thought of waterboarding him with his own blood and she wasn't sure if this sadistic thought was spurred from the blood painted on her face, or the hatred for the men whom not only hurt her but her fellow soldier. Spitting out the chunk of flesh from her mouth, Tamsin looked up through blood ridden matted hair to see the four terrorist silhouettes come rushing toward her from the oval table.  
Screw this shit.  
"You don't want to do that," She yelled, looking square at the lead man's eyes, the others getting to her before her influence could take hold. "You want to take out your gun and shoot your buddie next to you in the head," She grunted out as hands clamped her shoulders and arms forcefully; a hard fist scathing across her cheekbone.  
The soldiers, who held her arms and even her legs forcibly, did not see her skeletal face peering at one of their comrades. In their haste they had not even seen their brother in arms take out his pistol, pull back the catch, and fired into the man's brain-pan that was trying to pin the already pinned arms of the valkyrie.  
Shouting in their native tongue, the mind controlled terrorist got off another shot into the second terrorist's head, his blood coating Tamsin's right side, bloodying and masking her features even more, before the third, the last one standing, was able to pull out his own gun and take out his buddie.  
"Get me out of these restraints," Tamsin growled, her darkened eyes turning toward the last remaining living soul besides her in the room.  
The man immediately complied, moving towards the back of the valkyrie and pulled out his knife; swiftly cutting through the sharp knots Aleed had made for her. Tamsin, with her hands freed, bent to release her legs and tried not to groan with pain from her bruised stomach muscles.  
Standing erect again, the man's eyes were pinned forward as Tamsin stood slowly. Caressing her wrists, and flicking the trickled blood away from them, she looked behind her with a scowl on her face, something she was sure wouldn't be readable from the thick blood coating her features, and she eyed the broken glass from the smashed bottles that were knocked over when they had first entered the room.  
Bending down and taking the sharp item in hand, she realized the controlled man moved closer to her, and without another thought she stood up, whirled around with grunt, and squelched the knife deep into the terrorist's throat. Blood spurted out immediately and Tamsin watched as his life faded from him slowly, his tongue sticking out like that of a fish.  
"If you have done anything to her," Tamsin said, looking toward the men's corpses she had just killed. Looking back toward the oval table, she saw her enchanted rifle laying idly across it, and moved toward it with incredible speed. Pulling out the box magazine to check for her ammo, not that she really needed to as she knew the effects of the enchantment placed onto it, Tamsin flicked off the small case on both ends of her scope, and held the powerful weapon at the ready in her hands.  
"Time to find the good doctor."  
+++  
Lewis was thrown into the room that they had passed earlier, where she had fallen in front of no doubt, and she gasped as her foot slipped on the wet floor and she went down hard, unable to catch herself and hitting the ground hard on her side. Coughing and sputtering, she pleaded with the two men, only once, when the older one instructed the boy to close the door and to stay outside.  
The boy looked at the older man with questions in his eyes, looked back down to Lewis and smirked as he made kissing movements with his lips, and shrugged as he closed the door behind him.  
The woman heard his body lean onto the door and she wondered how much force she needed to exert to push him off balance if she were to escape the room somehow. Instead of continuing this train of thought, however, Lewis looked around her to see what type of room they were in and what type of torture was she about to be put through.  
Lewis may have been a doctor, but she wasn't stupid to the rules of engagement when being kidnapped by the opposing forces. If they couldn't get what they wanted from her commanding officer, and Tamsin was strong enough for the both of them, then they would move onto her as they were doing now. It wasn't that Lewis was scared for her own life, on the contrary she wanted to live as much as the next soldier, but she wasn't going to allow her commanding officer to be harmed for no good reason either.  
Seeing the overturned bucket of water on the far side of the room, Lewis knew exactly what she was in store for and she made no qualms about it.  
Turning, she looked into the brown eyes of her captor and said, almost nonchalantly but with cold determination, "Let's get this started if we're going to do this."  
+++  
Tamsin moved through the facility quietly, following the path in her mind that they had taken to get to the central room, and hoped her backtracking would lead her to her mark. It wasn't hard to navigate the place, it looked as if it were a random building erected for training soldiers but was abandoned after the war started, and the dank walls were easy to place where one was in the building.  
Coming up to a corner, Tamsin heard some type of scuffling and then an exhale of breath, and immediately got low, her weapon's butt held near her stomach region so the barrel wouldn't be able to be seen. Getting close to the floor, her left hand holding her steady as she bent lower still, she peeked over the side of the corner and tried to see her target.  
The boy looked like the one who was trying to rape the doctor when they had first entered the room, and Tamsin's nostrils flared at the thought of him hitting her. The boy, he must have been at least 18, was puffing on a cigarette and his head was pointed toward the sky. His eyes were slanted slightly as he closed them to exhale and he must have been thinking he was completely safe as the warrior valkyrie was tied up.  
How wrong he was.  
Tamsin moved back from the corner, her breath catching as she heard Lewis shout something, and she held her rifle to her body as she placed her blood crusted hair to the barrel of her rifle.  
She had to get into the room.  
+++  
"We're not here to hurt you," Lewis yelled at her captor, raising herself up from the floor, and resting the small of her back onto the table. She knew if the man opposing her wanted to, all he would have to do is grab her neck, bend her over the table, and grab the piece of rope lying idly by the overturned bucket to tie her to the table's built in half crescent holder. All he would have to do then, Lewis thought, was place the dirtied rag inside the bucket over her face, get water out of the faucet in the far wall, and she would have to control her breathing if she hoped to survive a drowning by waterboard. And, as a doctor, Lewis knew drowning was really not one of the kindest ways to go.  
"You think I care about my own life?" Aleed asked, looking at the frightened woman who was trying to show courage in the face of danger.  
"Then what are you after? What do you care about?"  
Aleed knew he should not have been talking to the prisoner, should not have cared enough to speak to such a savage, but something about the blonde woman drew him in. It was his old age, he decided, he was getting soft in his old age.  
"The convoy in the desert," He said after a pause, "my brother and my... son were in the jeep."  
"Oh God."  
"You were there to bury your secret, you killed my boy, my blood, and you will pay for that."  
Lewis' eyes widened as the man passed by her and pulled the bucket toward the faucet in the wall. Turning it on, he didn't even seem to care if Lewis came up behind him- as she was trained to kill- and allowed her to stand by the table until the bucket was almost full. Turning, his eyes dark, he looked into the brown eyes of his prisoner and shook his head from how similar their eyes were. How similar her eyes were to his son's.  
"I don't justify what we did to your child, I can't justify it as a doctor, but if we didn't stop them they would have killed us, my partner and I. You would have done the same if put in that position."  
"You are a doctor? Then you could not have been the one to pull the trigger. That only leaves-" Aleed was cut off as a loud and deafening shot rang from outside of the door. It seemed to have come from the end of the hall but the door almost cracked under the weight of someone falling into it with all of their force. "عزيزي الله."**  
Aleed, with the protest of Lewis as she ran to him, tried to move toward the door. The doctor grabbed his arm and said, "Don't go!" and instead of listening to her, the man jerked his arm upward and backward, making the doctor backtrack as she slipped on the floor again and bang into the table with a thud and gasp.  
Opening the door, his eyes traveled downward as he did not even see the blood trail on the wooden door, and he let out an anguished yell as he saw his brother's son dead on the floor, a gunshot wound through his head.  
Pulling out his wicked knife in one hand, his pistol in the other, Aleed was about to step over his fallen blood when he heard footsteps running toward him. Before he could turn and fire his weapon, a hard fist punched him in the cheek with so much force he thought he saw stars for a moment. It wouldn't have been an issue, seeing stars, if the man had not been so close to the door frame, his neck hitting it from the recoil of the punch, and he could have sworn before his eyes dimmed that his neck had been snapped.  
+++  
Tamsin had held the rifle upward, the strap twisted around her right hand as she held the underbarrel, as she whispered, "Finna að miða."*** and wasn't surprised when the gun started to hum, like electricity, in her hands almost immediately. Placing her finger across the catch, she closed her eyes, her head turned toward the corner, and pulled the trigger immediately.  
Any normal rifle, any gun even, would have simply made a crater into the ceiling, but hers simply made a direct path, if not a clearer one than she herself could have shot, toward the head of the closet target in the room.  
There was a grunt and then the body went down, onto the door, and Tamsin held her gun beside her as her left hand touched the damp wall as she peered around the corner.  
"One down," She whispered as she saw the dead boy, who could not have been any older than the boy she had taken the life of in the jeep, resting just outside of the closed door.  
The valkyrie heard rushing footsteps from inside the waterboarding room, she remembered immediately that was the room that housed the dripping bucket, and she immediately stood, switched her rifle into her left hand, and began running down the long hallway to get to the door.  
Just as it opened, and she saw the older man stick his head out, weapons drawn, Tamsin revved back her right hand ready to make the long awaited strike to the man. She had almost made it to him when she skidded on the blood from the dead boy and it catapulted her forward to hit the man's face, his neck crashing into the door frame, presumably broken. Catching herself just after she killed the ring leader, she huffed out a breath as she entered the room and didn't need to look far.  
Lewis was standing in the middle of the room, her back against a similar rectangular table as was in the central room, and she looked scared of the woman in front of her. Not that Tamsin didn't suspect the woman to not be scared, she was dressed from- most likely- head to toe in blood, but instead of looking toward the valkyrie for long, she quickly looked down at their captor who had fallen to the floor.  
"We have to go," Tamsin said gruffly, coming into the room and trying to catch Lewis' arm as she bent over the man.  
"No, no, I can save him. He's not dead yet, I can save him."  
Tamsin, who was as flabbergasted as it gets, bent down slightly so her hair rained in front of her face and she was at ear level. "I don't think I heard you right. You want to save the life of the man that kidnapped us, was probably going to allow his boys to rape us, and let's not forget the fun factor of torture."  
"We- you killed his brother," Lewis said, her eyes leaving the man's face for a moment to stare up towards Tamsin. "You killed his brother in that jeep and then you killed his son."  
The valkyrie looked down at Lewis, looked down at her as if she were some kind of new person she had just met, and looked at the barely breathing man below her.  
The terrorist.  
The man who would have killed them both. The man that had created that dreadful mark on Lewis' left hand, the hand she was using now to try to find what was broken or destroyed in the man's neck as she massaged along it.  
Tamsin didn't understand what was going on, what she had gotten herself into, how the lines of good and evil had crossed so suddenly before her.  
Shaking her head, she grabbed Lewis' arm again and said more furiously, "He would have done the same to us."  
"And we would have done the same to them if we had found them out trying to bury the bodies."  
"They wouldn't have given a shit about burying the bodies, Lewis," Tamsin yelled despite herself. She didn't know why she was trying to get the doctor to understand. She didn't know why she didn't just leave the blonde there. But here she was. "Don't you get that? You keep blurring the lines, you think they're just like us, but you're wrong. You're wrong! They wouldn't have gone back for the soldiers they had killed. They wouldn't have shown that respect to them. So you get your ass up right now or I will drag you out of here, soldier."  
"No, no, I can fix him. Just let me try."  
"They are murderers!"  
"And so are you!" Lewis gasped almost immediately after saying it, and she looked up at the woman standing beside her. "I-I didn't mean that. Please Tamsin, I didn't-"  
"We're leaving. Now," Tamsin whispered as she roughly pulled Lewis to her feet.  
Lewis didn't fight the woman as her commanding officer pulled her out of the room, over the body from the entryway, and down the dank hallway of the facility; leaving the barely breathing man behind, probably the only one still alive throughout the entire building.  
She didn't fight her, and she wouldn't fight her, she just continued to run beside the woman; so aware of the hollow feeling exuding from Tamsin's form the entire time they ran.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * "سخيف الأميركيين." is Arabic which means, "Fucking Americans" in English.  
> ** "عزيزي الله." is Arabic which means, "My God" in English.  
> *** "Finna að miða." is Icelandic which means, "Find the target" in English.


	5. Sacrifice

_When a valkyrie is given her mark, they are given a vision of their mark's death, and that is how the powerful fae know the face of the person they are supposed to ferry along to the afterlife. The image of the mark, just as a precaution, are burned onto the valkyrie's retinas so that the warrior could not for the life of her forget the face of the person they are supposed to take._

_Everything else about the death, the when and the how, is all forgotten in the valkyrie's mind. It slips, like a wet noodle, into the subconscious mind so that she could not think of saving the individual. Even sometimes when they turn rogue, when they have the insatiable desire to save their mark, the maiden herself was the one to cause the death of the one they wanted to save; a cruel and inhuman lesson. Thus leading her to turn to, for a better word, autopilot and take the soul of the individual to ascend to Valhalla. It was simply all forgotten for this reason._

_That is, however, until the mark's death draws nearer._

_When the valkyrie, and her mark, are in the area that would be the last scenery they’d ever see; only then will the memories come rushing forth to the valkyrie, what kills her mark, what they feel in the moments of panic or solace, so that the valkyrie will be prepared for the death in the split second it happens._

_The vision is only ever remembered, as stated, right before the mark is about to die. Therefore, if the valkyrie has grown attached to her mark, they would not have enough time to save them- or so they think-, thus demanding of them to continue what they were sent there to do and take the warrior up to Valhalla as they have earned an honorable death._

+++

Tamsin remembered the speech given to her as a child, when she had just found herself born to be a valkyrie, and for the life of her she could not understand why it was playing over and over in her mind. She had been pushing along the darker blonde in front of her ever since they escaped the terrorist facility, and ever since her actions in the facility, the blonde doctor would not look at her. If she needed the canteen Tamsin had picked up just before leaving, she would simply reach out a hand behind her- as Tamsin was _always_ behind her- and she would give it to her.

It wasn't easy to tear her eyes away from the blonde as she bent her head backwards, her hair falling behind her and her strong throat coming into view, but somehow Tamsin did every time the human would take a drink. Then, after her thirst was quenched, she'd simply give the canteen back to Tamsin without looking at her, and continue walking.

They had been walking for much of the night, Tamsin thought it would be light soon as her watch, that was thankfully not taken from her by the terrorists, read 0400. The flashlight the valkyrie had taken from the dead was going to run out of juice soon, as it was already dwindling in light, and Tamsin knew if they did not camp now, they would lose their bearings even with the built in compass in her watch.

“Lewis, we have to make camp,” Tamsin said, her throat parched as she had not drank any of the precious water since they escaped more than five hours prior.

“They'll find us if we camp here.” Lewis was still not looking at her, but instead placed her fists to her hips and looked out into the darkened surroundings after she stopped walking.

“There isn't any shelter anywhere, Lewis. Since we didn't get a shovel, we'll have to try to dig up the earth with our bare hands; try to make some kind of trench to block the wind or we'll freeze to death in the night.” Tamsin looked back up toward the sky and back to her watch. “It'll be light soon, so it should start heating up again. We shouldn't need to-”

“Fine, let's do it then,” Lewis cut in, coming up beside the gunny and starting to claw the earth with her fingertips instead of her nails.

“Right, fine,” Tamsin whispered, bending down beside the human to begin helping her. Looking over to her, Tamsin was trying to think of something to say when Lewis beat her to it.

“Don't say a word, Rundstrom. I...I just need some time.”

Tamsin, who understood completely though she wished she didn't- it wasn't like _she_ was the one to say something hurtful to the doctor-, nodded slightly and continued to help the doctor unpack the hard earth with her fingers.

+++

I must do this for my family...

Aleed was trying to call upon the little strength he had left, he had been unconscious for most of the night, and when he finally awoken he tried to raise himself from the floor. Every time he tried, however, he fell uselessly back onto his back, his strength leaving him in a rush. His neck, somewhere inside of it, was partially broken and he knew he should stop trying to move in hopes of not ending his life accidentally from falling back to the floor.

Forsaking these thoughts, however, Aleed tried again to raise himself from the floor and, thankfully, had gotten a few inches higher than his previous exploits, but still fell back onto the bloodied surface again. His nephew's blood soaked the cement, and it had trailed, ever so slowly, into the room where Aleed lay. Sooner rather than later, the lower half of his body was lying in his flesh's blood. Thankfully, it had stopped there, where his lower section ended at his thighs, and had not streamed menacingly up towards his face.

Aleed had no idea if he could take it if that had happened.

Closing his eyes tightly, he banged his fists into the ground as he tried to think of a way to achieve justice for his family. All of them are dead, he repeated in his mind, all of them are dead and it is those pig's fault. They will pay for this. They will pay.

Just as Aleed finally thought this for the tenth time, he heard a small noise come toward him from the hallway. It was not a noise he was accustomed to, he did not watch movies, and he did not have such a sound in his country. The thing he could associate the noise to accurately was that of the clip-clops of his prized horse he had owned when he was a small child. It's shoe was what made that sound, and Aleed wondered briefly if, in his dying breaths, if his steed would see him one last time. Closing his eyes again as the noise reached just outside of the door, coming in contact with Hafsa's body as Aleed saw it move slightly, he waited for the deliverer of his death.

“Such a shame, everyone here seems to be dead,” A female voice resounded into the room, bouncing from the high ceilings and walls.

Opening his eyes, Aleed saw a highly overdressed woman, how she could wear so many useless layers in the desert he did not know, walk into the room with a smirk on her face. Her hair was curled and that of dark brunette, much as his horse sported, and he briefly wondered if this woman was the incarnation of his prized steed. Though, he thought slowly, the woman looked more beautiful than any he had seen to be an incarnation of a horse.

“Oh goody, one's not dead,” The woman said, coming into the room with a small bag slung across her wrist.

“Am I... dead?”

“Do you look dead? Honestly the thoughts that run through your human heads when you're about to die.”

“Human?”

The woman before him rolled her eyes and unclasped her purse. Pulling out what looked like a small, dark red, pill, the woman bent down slowly to rest just beside Aleed's head.

“Do you want to live?”

“To avenge my family, I do.”

“Then it's your lucky day. This pill was once a serum, and after many decades of hard work, now it's a hard packed substance. Enticing that it came from a human.” The woman's eyebrows raised slightly in some type of emotion Aleed couldn't comprehend. “And now I'll give it to you on one condition.”

“What is the condition?” Aleed choked out.

“I want you to kill the woman that tried to break your neck, and bring the doctor you were about to murder to me. Everything else is forfeit. Do we have an agreement?”

“What is... your name, woman?”

The brunette smirked sharply, bent down and placed the pill into Aleed's mouth, and said, “I'm the Morrigan, darling. And I don't take no for an answer.”

+++

The two blondes had been cuddled up for warmth, something Tamsin knew Lewis probably didn't want to do, as the night waned. It wasn't very difficult, the valkyrie hadn't pondered very much about it from the events earlier that day, to unpack the hard earth and push it up to the side of their small trench like bed. It had only taken a good fifteen minutes to build it, and it had taken even less time for the freezing women to bunker down into it. Tamsin had allowed Lewis to go first, and she followed swiftly behind her, jumping down to huddle against the left of the trench while Lewis took up the right side.

Lewis' back was warm as it touched Tamsin's chest slightly, the room cramping them up to where they had to bend their knees slightly, and the valkyrie liked the way her longer legs nestled into Lewis' shorter ones. If she were anyone else, Tamsin thought she would have probably draped her right hand around Lewis' midsection, holding her closer as to keep them both warm. Yes, Tamsin thought, for warmth.

The valkyrie's left hand, which had been pinned under her body in a most uncomfortable position, was finally moved as she had had enough of the cramping. When it slightly brushed against the underbarrel of her rifle, only then did Tamsin‘s breathing slow down to a normal pace as she felt comfortable again. Trying not to nuzzle her nose into Lewis' hair, and failing miserably, Tamsin was happy for the soft drizzle of rain from earlier that day when they had escaped.

Taking little time, she quickly put her rifle down to her side, and had glanced up at the rain as it hit her body slightly. She had cleaned herself as best she could, at least her face, bare arms, and hair no longer held any blood, and Tamsin could do little of the stain that was now in her tank top and her pant legs. She would have to deal with it, thankful that the excess of crimson liquid had been washed with the rain, and after she was done, she quickly picked up her rifle again and trudged on after Lewis who did not stop for her.

“What are you doing?” Lewis asked after awhile, just as Tamsin had gotten just a tad bit comfy; the beautiful smell of Lewis' hair calming her more quickly than the feel of her rifle to her touch.

Pulling back from the woman, their bodies just barely touching now, Tamsin said, “Just trying to get comfy, doc. Warmth and ra-ra-ra.”

There was silence from opposite her and then, with a lot more grunts and groans Tamsin thought possible, Lewis slowly but steadily turned around in the soft space to look toward the valkyrie. Her brown eyes pierced green ones and she put her arms just below her head, laying on them steadily. Small strands lay slightly hindering her eyesight, but the medic didn't seem to care. Instead, she just stared at Tamsin.

“Is there something in my teeth?"

A smile, something Tamsin didn't think possible, spread across Lewis' lips, which reached to her eyes, and she said, “No. I just wanted... to look at you, that's all.”

“Why?” Tamsin wasn't self conscious about the way she looked, she knew- as all maiden's knew- that she was beautiful. It was not herself being vain, it was simply the truth.

Lewis, instead of answering looked down at Tamsin's right hand, that was lain out on her stomach, and finally she said, “I'm sorry for what I said before. I didn't mean-”

“Yeah, you did,” Tamsin cut in, her eyes, instead of turning cold, simply portrayed the truth.

“I said it in anger. That doesn't mean I really meant to say it to hurt you. I just.. I wanted...”

“You wanted to save him,” Tamsin finished, looking into Lewis' downcast eyes.

“Yes. I wanted to save him,” Lewis repeated, looking back up toward Tamsin. “I'm a doctor, Rundstrom. I know, I know that this is a war. But... I'm still a doctor.”

“And I am a warrior, doc. It isn't just black and white in war. There's grey and lots of it. I killed those men, their blood bathed my skin, and yet does that make me evil? Does that make me evil that I killed them so that you and I could live? They would not have shown us such a mercy if they were put into our position, Lewis. You have to remember that.”

“But it's only because of what we've done to them!”

“Yes,” Tamsin agreed, “they're only the way they are because of what we've done to them. But they've been like this for a very long time, you gotta understand that. It was just our bullying into their affairs that finally allowed us to take the credit of being the bad guys. And that's fine,” Tamsin said, her eyes never leaving Lewis', “I can play the bad guy here. But I only did it because I needed you to be safe.”

Lewis tried to hold back her gasp, and she bit her lip instead. Looking up to her commanding officer she said slowly and deliberately, “I'm sorry for the way I acted back in the facility. You saved my life... and I thank you for that. I mean it, I really do. Thank you, R-...Tamsin.”

The valkyrie would have jolted out of the trench if she thought it would help her mind stop hammering against her skull; her heart against her ribcage. The medic had used her first name, something that was never really used in the field, or anywhere in the first meetings of the military, and yet after everything they had been through, the darker blonde had used her name.

She had taken that step, the use of the first name, and it should have made Tamsin screech with joy, to fly up into the air and cheer and clap with the revelation, but it didn't.

_It didn't._

Her mark, her target, had used her first name. Had said the word with such comfort, with such hidden love, that it could only mean one thing on the medic's lips from now on: safety.

Lewis thought she was safe with Tamsin, safe from the evils of the world, of the dead and living terrorists around them.

Just safe.

Instead of getting up out of the trench and back into the cold that permeated even below ground, Tamsin watched as Lewis bit her lip again as she contemplated what to do next, and slowly, oh so painstakingly slowly, she moved the few inches it took to get into Tamsin's personal space. Taking her left hand to hold onto Tamsin's right, Lewis slowly brought up her right hand to slowly caress the side of the valkyrie's neck as she went in even further.

Their lips touched and, to Tamsin anyways, it was like electricity running through her body. She shouldn't be doing this, Tamsin should _not_ be doing this, but it felt so damn good and long coming. It had only been three days, four now that it had reached the morning, and yet Tamsin felt so strongly for the human opposing her it should not have been possible.

Instead of pulling away, instead of retrieving her weapon and getting out of the trench, Tamsin brought her left hand from above her and pulled Lewis into a deeper kiss, grabbing the side of the woman's neck with her own hand gently. Pulling away only sligtly, Tamsin took the medic's left hand in her own and kissed the circular burn pattern that marked her flesh. Looking into Lewis' eyes again, she lowered the medic's hand slowly and took up the kiss again.

The kiss lengthened, Tamsin who had battled for dominance at first now seemed to be at ease against the workings of Lewis' mouth, and the human seemed to not have cared that a few hours prior blood washed over Tamsin's features.

They simply didn't care, all that mattered was that their bodies and their mouths were in contact with each other.They could have died in the facility just hours before, and Tamsin knew that the human's mind was still reeling from it. That was the only reason she could have even begun to fathom of kissing, and having sex, with the valkyrie while they were in a dirt packed trench.

But Tamsin didn't care, she _wanted_ the woman beneath her, writhing and bucking at Tamsin's touch, she wanted the woman to feel what the valkyrie felt the very first day they were together.

She wanted Petty Officer Lewis to feel safe.

+++

The next morning, Tamsin woke her medic up after only three hours of slumber as she thought that it came all too soon. The women had not taken off their clothing for their heated rush in the night, Tamsin had barely gotten Lewis' top above her neck before she was onto the pants, and they did not need to make themselves presentable after exiting the trench.

Tamsin quickly retrieved her rifle from the hole and began to pack in the dirt that they had dislodged, so that if anyone came, the enemy could not see that the women had come this way. Quickly finishing her job, Tamsin caught up with Lewis, she had told her to keep walking to make more ground, and bumped into her playfully. Lewis looked up and smiled kindly toward the women, her eyes still downcast from the events from the facility but her mind set just a little at ease, and she looked back toward the harsh desert before them.

The day, it had just hit 0700, would be a doozy Tamsin knew, as it was already beginning to seethe with heat. Quickly wiping her arm across her forehead, Tamsin looked up to see how better Lewis was doing, but before she could, the woman found a very interesting landmark that was coming up in the road.

A black stone.

It would not have been very interesting if not for the strong sensation that passed through the warrior's mind after witnessing it.

Tamsin felt another strange sensation pass over her body, almost like a cold wind permeating her flesh, when she passed the strange black rock across the road. It wouldn't have meant anything to her, yet something seemed to be dredging up inside her head that she didn't understand. She looked in front of her towards the blonde woman she came to care about in little over four days; watching as the woman seemed to falter in her steps from the heavy trek they had both made across the desert.

The valkyrie smirked. She may have been carrying their supplies, or lack thereof as she only carried her rifle and a few solid knives, but it was Lauren who was deadbeat tired. Her beautiful blonde hair, that was shades darker than Tamsin's own and much more wavy and curly, was matted to her forehead from the small droplets of sweat that she excreted. The top and back of her uniform, she had taken off her overcoat and only wore her white tank top, had streams of damp sections running across it.

Not that the valkyrie was faring any greater, Tamsin thought as she watched with loving- or lusting, she didn't dare know- eyes at the woman in front of her. Tamsin's own overcoat was still around her shoulders, she could not very well hold her coat in one hand and shoot with the other, and she was probably more drenched than Lauren was herself.

So when that strange, cold, sensation hit her body, it was like a punch to the abdomen. The black rock, that stood at odds with the pale orange sand, looked somehow... familiar. But it couldn't have been, Tamsin tried to reason, because if that was the case that would mean she had been in these parts before. And that, she thought, could not have happened. Unless...

+++

_Blood. All the valkyrie-maiden saw was blood. As she walked the red soaked fields, the sand around her slowly walking form was covered in pools of the copper smelling liquid, the maiden looked around slowly to see where her most honorable mark lay. Almost immediately, even though the mark had been nowhere in sight , the valkyrie-maiden was suddenly by her side, bending down slowly to rest on the balls of her feet and witnessing her mark's body lay just pass a strange black rock in the road. She did not need, or care, to shield her eyes from the unnatural bright light her mark was exuding from her being, casting small shadows across the pools of blood and sand around them, and she smiled down at the warrior with caring eyes._

_“You are honorable,” The valkyrie-maiden whispered, placing a hand on the woman's shattered shoulder, uncaring of the blood that smeared onto her fingertips._

_Whatever had done this to her, the maiden thought slowly- everything was slow here- as she looked the mark up and down, was by far anything human. The mark's face, much like the rest of her body, was covered in copious amounts of blood and gore and her eyes seemed to not comprehend what was happening to her._

_“I-I'm dying?”_

_“Yes,” Tamsin said slowly and deliberately. She had no reason to lie to the human woman, taking the honorable warrior up to Valhalla took precedent over the rule of keeping the fae a secret, and she needed the woman to understand her mortal fate as to make the transition easier on her._

_“Are you here to help me; a doctor?” The human sounded so hopeful, so desperate for the maiden to have been someone that could help her mortal life, even her rasping breath seemed to cease from hope. “F-five of my ribs are broken on either side. I-I'll need IV fluids and I need five cc's of-” The human warrior choked on a wave of blood that cascaded out of her mouth and onto the ground. Using the rest of her strength to push herself back onto her back, she had moved to her shattered shoulder to spit, the warrior looked up towards the green eyed valkyrie-maiden._

_“You are not a doctor... are you.”_

_The maiden smiled kindly and said, “No, I am not.” The maiden was brash, mean even, when she was out in the real world. But when she did her duty, all of it went out the window. She was civil, she was kind, she was everything she tried to hide from the prying eyes of the human and fae world. She was lucky during this sacred ritual, no one should have been able to witness the transfer, and the maiden liked it that way._

_“Then why are you here?”_

_“You lived an honorable life,” The maiden said, her fingers dragging along the woman's cheeks to place the fallen strands of hair, that were stuck quite profusely to the human's bloodied cheeks, back into place with the other strands. “I am here to take you to a place where you may live out your eternal life in peace and happiness much as the warrior you have shown yourself to be.”_

_“I-I'm a doctor.”_

_“Yes.”_

_“I fix people, I believe in science.”_

_“Yes,” The maiden said again, her almost transparent green of her eyes trailing down to the soft brown that stood so at odds from the pools of red blood across her body._

_“I'm not a warrior,” The woman said finally, turning her eyes away from the valkyrie-maiden's to look up toward the dark blue sky of the waning day._

_The maiden turned her own eyes toward the sky, which was a futile attempt as she could not see the beauty the human saw, and found it to be swirling vortex of bright colors. Blues, greens, and soft yellow's and purples swam around each other in circles, leaving the eye of the supposed storm- the valkyrie-maiden's transport of sorts-, calm and, to a human's eyes, beautiful._

_To the valkyrie-maiden, however, it was far from beauty. It was the dead, the dishonorable dead, humans that could not be allowed to enter the heavenly gates of Valhalla. Their twisted, sunken and pale gray and green, disgusting faces silently screamed in dread and despair as they swirled around the opening in which they could never reach. Their spindly arms would reach for the maiden and her mark on each ascension, but they were always just out of reach of receiving a free ticket into the beautiful place._

_Instead, they were made to witness the carnage, the blood and destruction, that only their ghostly eyes could see. The eyes the valkyrie-maiden's peered out of each and every time they came to the earthly plane to live, to retrieve their mark, or to coexist with their human and fae counterparts. The eyes that seemed to drive the Dishonorables insane from the destruction they were forced to witness every second, minute, hour of each day._

_Looking back down toward the human warrior, the valkyrie-maiden smiled again. “You do not have to be a great, extraordinary, powerful killer to be a great warrior, sweet doctor. A warrior is brave. A warrior is experienced. A warrior,” The maiden said as she smiled down at the woman, “does not always have to be a fighter of the physical kind. They can be a fighter of emotions.” Taking her bloodied finger from earlier, the maiden placed it gently onto her mark's chest, just above her heart. “The slayer of fear and ailments._

_“They can be a doctor; a doctor can be a warrior,” The maiden continued, taking her hand away from the woman's heart and placing it onto her forehead gently. “You do not always have to fight, kill, and maim to be a warrior that has earned their place somewhere on high. It is okay to be meek sometimes, you do not know, it may earn you a place just yet.”_

_By the time the valkyrie-maiden finished her speech, a speech she had not planned to use to further calm the dying woman, her mark had teared up. The water from her eyes slid down her cheeks in small streams, slowly mixing with her bloodied features and making it run from her face onto the crevice of her strong neck, to pool just above her collarbone._

_“You called me a human,” The woman finally said, her tears stopping just for a moment for her to blink rapidly up towards the maiden. “Why would you call me a human if you are too?”_

_The valkyrie-maiden shook her head slowly and said, “I can only tell, and show, you that after I do my duty.”_

_“I will forget when you do your duty, won't I? It is the only logical course of action to keep yourself a secret. Even if I'm going to this... honorable place.”_

_The maiden smirked. “I am not a deity, human. The incessant humans centuries ago believed we were, but we are not. I am a Valkyrie, a powerful maiden of the great god Odin, and I am here to take you to Valhalla so you may live your eternal days there until my lord will call upon you for the Great Battle.” Before the human could speak, the valkyrie-maiden saw her eyes widening and her mouth opening for questions, but instead the maiden raised her hand in a soft gesture of silence. “I am apart of the subspecies of humans known as the fae. We are superior to humans only because we have abilities where you do not. The valkyrie is one of the highest forms of fae and, when we are in our prime, we are meant to be feared over all else. Our duty is the only reason we have not been feared more increasingly amongst our ranks.” The valkyrie-maiden looked toward the human and said finally, “Is this what you wished to have known before your death? You understand that you will forget this interaction until you are safely in the halls of the kingdom of Valhalla.”_

_The human, instead of becoming increasingly erratic, simply looked up into the valkyrie-maiden's eyes and spoke calmly, “I'm ready.”_

_Smirking from the human's strong demeanor, the valkyrie-maiden raised the broken human, with her left arm, by the nape of her neck. Her right hovered slightly above the woman's chest, just above the middle of her being, and she was about to thrust her hand slightly into the human when the latter stopped her._

_Placing her hands onto the valkyrie-maiden's wrist gently, her brown, soulful, eyes pierced her when she asked, “Will it hurt?”_

_“It will not hurt, I promise you.”_

_“W-will you be there, in,” The human smiled slightly as she rolled the word around in her mouth from it's foreign meaning, “Valhalla?”_

_“I will only be there as long as it takes to integrate you into your surroundings. One of my kinswomen will see to you after I have left.”_

_“How long will it take? To integrate me, I mean.”_

_“We do not have much time for this.”_

_“Please...”_

_The valkyrie-maiden sighed and said, “It does not take long. Once you are there, it is very seldom someone will try to reject the peaceful thoughts of the other warriors. You will enjoy it there, even if you will have no use of your profession until the Great Battle arrives.”_

_“Thank you,” The human whispered, slowly taking her hands away from the maiden's wrist and laying them back to her side._

_Without a second thought, the valkyrie-maiden could not think of anything else for fear of her trying to save one of the most honorable humans she had met in the brief time of their talk, the maiden slowly pushed her right hand, which was bathed in bright light, into the chest of the human. There was no resistance, no physical material that got in her way, and her hand passed with ease into the chest of the human laying before her._

_Finding what she was looking for, the valkyrie-maiden's hand and the human's chest seemed to burn a brighter color of the pure light, when the maiden slowly tugged on the simple thing the human's praised for the reasons for their difference. With one more small tug, the valkyrie-maiden slowly raised the soul of the doctor's corporeal form from it's dying- and now dead- shell on the ground._

_Looking into her still soulful brown eyes, her features turned into a ghost like apparition until the arrival into Valhalla, but those eyes were just the same._

_The valkyrie-maiden slowly raised the woman's soul to her feet by the hand, her green eyes still holding onto brown ones, and her smile matched the heavens. “It is time to go home, warrior.”_

_“I...I'm ready,” The doctor-warrior said, her eyes looking sadly down to her corporeal body._

_It was in the best interest of the valkyrie-maiden to have told the human what was going to happen before she did it, as the apparition was more accustomed to the idea- faint tendrils of memories piercing her mind- and the maiden knew it when the doctor-warrior gave her answer swiftly._

_“Your wings, and armor, are beautiful,” The doctor-warrior whispered, her eyes now able to see the elegant wings that hung from the maiden's back. Her steel, the material was much more powerful than steel but it was the closet human word for it, armor clung form fittingly to her body and she smiled toward the woman opposite her._

_It was only a ghost image of the powerful appendages, and links of armor, that would be seen fully, and without the faint watered-down color, seen in Valhalla but the maiden still smiled kindly. It was not the newly deceased doctor-warrior's fault that she did not see that her wings were only a ghost image, much as the warrior was herself, until they reached the heavenly gates._

_“Come, place your arms around me, and,” The valkyrie-maiden moved closer to the blonde, her lips just above her ear, “close your eyes, dear warrior.”_

+++

Tamsin's eyes widened, the valkyrie tried to shake her disturbing vision off, it all coming back to her as quickly as it took a .50 caliber bullet to pierce the skull of a sniper victim, and immediately left the black rock and scavenged her surroundings. If she knew her physical body could not have been in this area before, that her vision had been remembered at that brief moment, then that could only mean one other explanation of how she knew, how she recognized, that strange rock.

Her mark's death was drawing nearer. So near, in fact, that it was happening right in that very instant.

Without another glance at their surroundings, Tamsin knew she had to do something now or Lauren was going to die- and she was _not_ going to allow that to happen-, the valkyrie gripped her rifle in her left hand and ran the few feet ahead of her that the doctor was walking slowly.

Just as Tamsin reached her, just as the valkyrie touched the small of the doctor's back and pushed with all her force, an eerie scream resounded to Tamsin's right and something hard, and fast, came in contact with the warrior's rib cage. She could have sworn she heard her ribs break and her side squelch with blood from the impact.

Before she knew it, Tamsin went flying into the pale sand, her rifle still gripped in her hand, her eyes closed as instead of simply skidding across the desert floor, the strength of the assailant outmatched any she had fought in the new century, and she heard the harsh breaking of the ground as she skidded along it; breaking up even more of the packed earth, leaving a small crater behind her when she finally stopped her fun little ride.

Opening her eyes slowly, Tamsin saw the outline of a large beast of a man, his muscles bulging like some grotesque blow-up doll, it's skin a strange blood-like color from it's expanded vessels, and his dark brown eyes pierced her with hate. It's chest was bare from it's increased muscle size and it only wore torn dark jeans, jeans that were soaked to the brim in dried blood. The beast was foreign to her, yet, with all of her ability, Tamsin couldn't shake the feeling as if she knew the beast in front of her.

Slowly turning her eyes to the left, Tamsin saw a scared, her hands were to her lips, and wide eyed Lewis staring at Tamsin's disgruntled body position and the thing that had thrown her. She looked scared, Tamsin found, but she didn't look as if she had never witnessed the thing standing before her somewhere in the past.

Tamsin had no choice but to place her attention back on the beast as it yelled in rage as it lifted its hands above its head.

“For my family,” It screamed, its teeth gnashing the air with each syllable.

Aleed, Tamsin questioned, her eyes widening as she saw the slight discoloration on the left side of the thing's cheek, the right side of the beast's neck. How the hell was that thing Aleed?

“Lauren, run!” Tamsin screamed, her rifle still clamped into her left hand. She raised herself quickly from the broken earth and made a b-line toward Aleed the Beast.

Raising her weapon just as Aleed found Lewis' small form; Tamsin fired a shot into the thing's head immediately. “Shit,” She said as it seemed to do nothing but deflect off of it. It can't be human, Tamsin thought furiously as she tried to fire yet another shot into the thing's abdomen, it _cannot_ be human!

She would have fired again, this time with a heated enchantment on the bullet, but before she could blood left her lips as Tamsin was hit in the stomach by the beast's huge arm. Just as she had gotten into range of the thing; she had tried to skid beneath it, dropping down to her knees to slide underneath, but he was too fast, it's bare muscles doing all the damage it needed to the valkyrie, as she went flying again.

The valkyrie would have gone much farther if she had not placed the butt of her gun into the sand as she was flown backward, her lips pressed together as she finally came to a rest, her left hand coming to rest on her abdomen as she bent her head in pain.

Looking upward, she tried not to huff in a breath as she tried to catch it again, Tamsin was surprised and frantic when Aleed was no longer in front of her.

Looking around quickly, Tamsin heard Lewis scream something so harshly that even from that

distance, she could still hear her.

“Above you!”

Tamsin quickly brought her weapon up immediately, strands of her hair moving in front of her face from her quick movement, and fired one round as Aleed the Beast came swooping down onto her, his giant fists above his head, and they were brought down hard onto Tamsin's upper chest.

Blood spurted from her mouth as she went down, the huge beast's legs making craters beside her in the earth, and she looked back toward the medic who was rushing toward her.

“Run, Lauren!” Tamsin screamed again, her left hand outstretched to the medic, blood cascading from her mouth as she yelled. In her peripheral vision, Tamsin saw Aleed the Beast's foot rising menacingly above her neck, ready to end her life then and there with a swift downward stomp.

Squeezing her eyes shut, then opening them as wide as she could so she could see the woman she cared for one last time, Tamsin screamed with all of her might, the last breath she thought she was ever going to take in this world; before everything went dark around her, she screamed the finale word she would ever scream, all of it was directed toward her medic.

“Ruuuun!”


	6. Run

 Lewis had been caught off guard when a strong hand pushed the small of her back forward and then, almost as if it was immediately taken away against its own accord, the soft pressure was no longer there. The medic turned quickly with a half smile on her face, thinking it was just Tamsin having a bit of fun again bumping into her, as she had felt what could have only been a tremor behind her, and looked at what could have pushed her forward that had almost made her lose her balance.

Her eyes, dark whiskey in color, were predisposed to look at a certain height, the height she knew Tamsin to be at, but instead of seeing the beautiful blonde gunny, all she saw was the wrists of a very large man. A man no longer, she found, as she looked up, and up, and up to see it's body that of a gigantic monster. Lewis' hands went instantly to her mouth in shock, and her head swiveled around quickly when she heard her name screamed from her right.

The monster turned toward her, growled, and then it was facing another way entirely as Tamsin had quickly ran up to it, firing a shot into its head- that deflected right off, Lewis saw with grotesque horror- and it had swatted the gunny away like a fly.

“Above you,” Lewis had screamed as, just as she could barely pull herself from her thoughts, she watched the grotesque gargantuan jump into the air almost immediately after hitting the gunny in the stomach. If her spleen and other organs weren't already bleeding, they were now; Lewis thought quickly- something she did not want to do, assess the condition the woman she cared for was in- as she watched the thing, its fists in the air, land right on top of the woman.

She felt her feet moving before she could stop them, not that she cared to stop as she wanted to save the woman she had came to grow fond of in such a short time, and she stopped abruptly, legs flinching but not moving from the ground, when Tamsin had reached out a hand and told her to run away.

Run away, like it was in her nature to, as if she could leave the gunny to die at the hands of something that couldn't have possibly been here. That the CIA had stated in so many files they had destroyed.

Run away. Like it was just that easy.

Turns out it was that easy, to make such a foolish decision, when Tamsin had screamed it one last time, had looked square into the eyes of the petite woman. It was that easy when the medic turned suddenly just as she saw the beast's foot come down right onto the gunny's neck and upper chest.

It turned easy very, very, quickly.

Lewis heard the screaming and frantic word echoing in her head as she pivoted on her heel away from the gore, the carnage, and pumped her arms along her sides. Her muscles burned, they had already been screaming since the other night when they had walked for hours, and she didn't think she would be able to make it back to camp, salvation from the heat, until she saw the beast that resembled a familiar man in front of her, but it was not because of contemporary reasons that dredged her memories before her eyes as she ran. It was because of what she had witnessed nineteen years ago.

+++

_“_ _Honey, hand me that vile, please,” A very young, very attractive man said to his daughter. His eyes were pinned through a microscope at the cultured deactivated virus he had been studying for months, and he couldn't very well leave it unattended. Besides, he thought as he raised a hand to scratch his scruffy dark blonde hair, it would give his little Doc some learning experience in her age._

_Nicholas Lewis was the nicest, and the only man in Doc's life. He was smart, funny, attractive, and he had a touch with explanations that rivaled the best teacher in the world. His dark blonde hair was slightly curled, he usually wore it down but in the lab he would place it in a ponytail much to his wife's dismay, and his beard was scruffy, in his daugther’s humble opinion, when he gave her a kiss on the cheek. Sometimes, she would reflect, his beard felt even worse when he tried to blow on her tummy, but she would still giggle and screech with laughter._

_Speaking of laughs, his was that of a low rumble that seemed to fill the receiver of the hearty murmur with laughs and giggles of their own, and Nicholas was the type of man that every man was jealous of for one reason or another. He was kind and generous and extraordinary._

_His smile could outmatch the Gods, as he turned slightly to acknowledge his daughter, and little Lauren Lewis wanted to giggle with excitement that her father was finally letting her help with the experiments. (Not that this was really helping, her father knew she couldn't break the vile, and even if she did, it wouldn't matter as they had cultured many other strings of the anti-virus in other beakers.) But still, little Lauren loved that her father asked for her to assist him._

_The little girl knew since she was the ripe age of three years old that she wanted to be a scientist, maybe even a doctor, just like her mother and father. Her mother, Andrea Lewis, was the doctor, her father simply a scientist. She wanted to be just like both of them as they were her heroes, and she was theirs._

_“On it, daddy,” Little Lauren said in excitement as she scooted off her tall seat. Her father, at the protest of her mother on numerous occasions, would pull up a stool for Lauren, on almost all of his working experiments, so she could see the work that he was doing._

_“A good doctor or scientist learns by watching,” Her father liked to say as he would show her how to lace the anti-virus into the cultured cells of the virus. “It isn't all about doing, Doc, sometimes you've just gotta watch.”_

_By that time, after her father would tell her this, Lauren would smile at her nickname her parents, mostly her father, would call her every chance he got. He had witnessed how smart she was since she was born, and he believed firmly in her abilities to become a renowned doctor that would change the field of science forever, a doctor who would save so many lives._

_And every time he would say this, Lauren would say the line she had always said back to him: “I'm going to be the best doctor, the strongest doctor, there is. Just you wait.”_

_“A good head on your shoulders,” The man would laugh, his hands around Lauren's waist as he swooped her in the air to make airplane movements around the area they were in._

_That was her father. Always supportive and jubilant._

_Not that her mother was not, Lauren would remind herself while she laid in her bunk at night, a small cut out picture of them from the time they were all together. (Which the twenty-four year old soldier kept on her person at all times tucked securely in her inner breast pocket.) But it was her father who was more understanding that Lauren, even with her remarkable mind, was still a child and needed to experience child things._

_Like the airplane, little Lauren would laugh at the airplane game._

_Coming back over with the beaker in hand, Lauren's small dainty arms held the glass beaker up so her father could take it carefully. Smiling down at her, the way only Nicholas could, and Lauren got back onto her seat again, this time getting on her knees to give her extra height, and she watched as her father took the cultured anti-virus from the beaker into a sucker- Lauren knew the right word for it, but she much preferred sucker- and very carefully poured it onto the slide with the virus._

_“Damn it,” Her father breathed as he looked up from his microscope, his fingers pinching the bridge of his nose while his palm covered his eyes. Remembering his daughter beside him, he quickly looked down with an eyebrow raised, leaned down closer to little Lauren and whispered,_

_“That bad word stays between us, Little Doc.”_

_“Roger,” Lauren whispered back, placing her extended fingered hand up to the side of her forehead in a mock salute that she had seen on the television set._

_Just as she placed her hand back onto the table with many a soiled slide that Lauren was ordered not to touch, the little girl's mother came barging into the room in what Doc liked to call “Red Alert”. Seeing too many Star Trek episodes may have been involved in the usage of the two words._

_“Honey, stay here,” Her father said, looking up toward his wife with a look of worry painted across his features._

_“Aye-aye, Captain,” Little Lauren said, waving her hand slightly as she played with the small unused plates- that she would have to clean herself after playing with them, as the rules stated if she was going to play with anything in the lab-._

_Her eyes may have been on the slides, but her ears were perked up as her mother spoke heatedly towards her father. It wasn't unusual for them to go off in a corner somewhere, away from the prying eyes and ears of a five year old, and speak about grownup things. But it was unusual that her father would turn into a very serious man, his brow furrowed in thought, his lips pressed together in a thin line, after every session they had together. Lauren's father was not that type of man that would become upset, mad even, over a bit of information and, Lauren would tell herself, even if he did he wouldn't do it in front of his daughter._

_So when they were finished with their talk, her mother flicking her eyes toward her daughter every few moments, and Lauren's father came back to sit on the stool with his hands in fists in his lap, Lauren knew to keep quite. Instead of wondering what was wrong with her father, the girl simply placed her small hands above his hand, squeezing down slightly to show that the grownup wouldn't have go through whatever he was thinking about alone._

_“Doc,” Nicholas whispered, coming down to eye level with the child, his expression deathly serious, “there's going to be something mommy and I have to do tonight. We can't leave the lab and we can't keep you up here by yourself. Are you up for an adventure?”_

_Little Lewis didn't have to second think her answer in the least, going on an adventure was her middle name- albeit a really long one- and she was more excited than she had been in a very long time._

_“Affirmative!”_

_+++_

_That night, after everyone had gone home, Nicholas and Andrea took hold of their daughter's hands and walked slowly down a narrow hallway. All the sides of it, even the ceiling little Lauren noticed, was the same shade of sterile white as the room they usually worked in, and she briefly wondered if all of the facility was bathed in the shade._

_They had been walking for such a long time and, finally, they turned a corner and found themselves at a high tech door that seemed to be indented from the linear hallway they had just come from. Her father quickly produced a key card from his pocket, it was strange to little Lauren that he fumbled with it inside his pocket and wondered if he kept anything else in there, and swiped it across the small reader on the left side of the door._

_A small chime sounded above them, making the family know their key card was accepted, and the door hissed as if the room was airtight as the lock unlatched._

_Andrea swiftly opened the door and held it open as she ushered her daughter inside, her brown eyes looking back at her husband in a silent question Lauren did not see: Should they really be doing this? Instead of answering, however, Nicholas simply bowed his head to tell his wife to keep walking, that their mission that night was an important one, and that they could not give up on it now._

_After they had all entered the sealed room, the latch on the door immediately hissed shut behind them, the adults looked around for what they were looking for. Little Lauren, however, simply was intrigued by a small set of square metal bars at the far end of the room, away from any prying eyes, and she wondered if a person wasn't looking for it, if they'd really see it tucked in the corner._

_Looking behind her and seeing her parents were rifling through papers, whispering violently to each other, Lauren looked back around toward the metal bars of what could only be a cage and started to walk toward them slowly. Just as she had reached them, there seemed to be two but only one was occupied, Lauren whispered “Hello?” before she put a small hand on the lower bars, the only things she could reach._

_Squinting her eyes, she really wished there was some type of light source they could turn on back here- the lights from the other end of the room seemed far off as their luminance did not cascade over the cages- and the only thing Lauren could see was a small, curled, disrobed form. It seemed to have two legs, little Lauren could at least discern that, and its dark jeans seemed to be the only thing it was wearing. His muscles bulged against his skin in grotesque patterns, and if Lauren was correct, his body would be fighting the strain of it since it looked as if he hadn't grown any mass to allow such an increase of muscle growth._

_“Hello,” Lauren said again, gently tapping on the metal bars with her palm._

_It turned to be a bad decision as the thing in the cage grunted; Lauren couldn't follow it how fast it was, the man was trying to reach out of the bars to claw at her small hands. Little Lauren quickly screamed and backed away, her right hand close to her chest for fear the beast would somehow get out of its cage and try to attack her again, and she heard her father yell for her as strong hands clamped down on her shoulders, pushing her away from the barred prison._

_“My God,” Andrea whispered, holding her hands to her lips as she witnessed the dirty monster in the cage. “I told you, I told you they were doing human testing.”_

_“We have to get him out of there,” Nicholas said, his lips pressed in a thin line as he looked toward his wife and then the beast._

_“No, daddy, no,” Lauren screamed, her small hands balled into fists as they hit his pant side. “It'll hurt both of you just like it tried to hurt me!”_

_“No it won't, Doc. I have this,” Nicholas said, coming down to be at eye level to his daughter. Pulling out, what Lauren only saw on television before the channel was switched immediately, a black and slick looking gun from his lab coat pocket, her father held it just out of reach of his daughter. “This will protect us, Lauren. It'll protect us from the bad man.”_

_“But-but- what if it fails?”_

_“These never fail, Doc.”_

_“You promise,” Lauren sniffled, looking up into the brown eyes of her father._

_“I promise. Now stand back there for me, Little Doc. Just in case.”_

_Lauren looked behind her to see where her father pointed, just a small console that could hide something small, and the girl moved slowly behind it. Her head peaked out just a little so that she could still see her heroic parents release the monster with compassion._

_She watched as her parents looked into each other's eyes, then back at the cage with the man, who had gone back to being docile, was. Andrea moved beside the far end of the cage, Nicholas the other end to where the door opened, and she looked one last time into her husband's eyes before she pressed the green button to release the locking mechanism to the door._

_Everything happened in a flash after that._

_The beast's docile behavior quickly became frantic and erratic after the door was opened, and all too quickly did he ram the door as it was opened slowly by Nicholas. Lauren watched with wide eyes as her father shot off one bullet into the air, hitting the ceiling with a horrible thudding sound, and witnessed the beast punch her father in the stomach. Nicholas went down hard onto his knees, he was a scientist, not a brawler, and the beast took her father's weapon quickly._

_“Please, don't do it, stop,” Lauren's mother screamed, leaving the opening panel behind as she tried to run around the front of the cage and to her husband's side. Before she got there, however, the beast moved so fast that little Lauren had not seen him move the gun from her father's head and pointed it toward her mother's instead._

_A shot rang out loudly in the room. So loudly, in fact, Lauren had to cover her ears as she kept her eyes pinned on her mother._

_Little Doc watched as her mother went down almost immediately after the shot was fired, her eyes were still open in wide eyed terror, her palms pointing toward the ceiling from her sides. If Lauren had been any other person, any other person who did not know about science, she would have thought her mother was looking right at her after she fell dead to the ground._

_“Andrea... Doc, run,” Nicholas screamed, getting back to his feet again, and fighting the beast for the gun after witnessing his wife's demise._

_But little Lauren didn't move. She couldn't stand, she could feel herself trembling from head to toe, and before she knew it she could feel something warm cascade down her leg pants and pool around her into the sterile white of the ground._

_She watched, with tears stinging her eyes but none ran down her cheeks, as her father was too weak- or rather the thing was too strong from whatever had been injected into him- to fight off the beast and get dominance over the weapon. The beast quickly brought it down, into the stomach region of Lauren's father, and the girl flinched when yet another loud sound rang through the room again._

_Lauren heard her father groan a little, his eyes wide against the beast's bare arm as he coughed once, and he went down slowly onto the floor. He was dead, Lauren thought as she watched the last breath leave his lips, he was dead and she was alone. They were_ both _dead, the girl thought slowly as she looked toward her mother's wide eyes, they were both dead in the room and their blood was running out in pools underneath._

_Mustering what courage she had left, Lauren wasn't really thinking, she got to her feet and yelled out, “Mommy!” as she ran the small distance from her mother. Before reaching her, however, little Lauren did not see her mother's blood pool stretch out further than she had seen, and she quickly lost her footing, falling back onto her bottom, as she slid in her mother's blood. Raising her hands to her eyes, Lauren saw what she had slipped in, and looked down the last few feet to her mother. “Mommy,” She said, the tears threatening to run down her face, yet they did not._

_Little Doc looked up slowly as she heard her father's gun cock back and she saw the beast pointing the deathly metal contraption at her forehead, it's eyes that seemed as if they could have been brown, but had changed to that of a dark void, looked into her solemn and terrified brown ones as he let its actions sink into the girl's brain._

_She was going to die just like her mother and father. And somehow... somehow Lauren wasn't afraid of death._

_Instead of closing her eyes, Lauren glared down the beast as she saw the slight twitch of its finger across the catch of the gun._

_And then, everything went black._

_+++_

_“She was just a child! You sent me there to collect the souls of her parents, not the girl,” A honey voice said in front of little Lauren. It was strange, Lauren thought, as she couldn't see who was in front of her, like she had suddenly gone blind._

_Duh, she said to herself, as she squeezed her eyes, I just forgot to open them._

_To her surprise, she did not see her parent's dead bodies strewn out in front of her, and she felt dry and in new clothes as she looked down at herself. Instead, she saw what she could only be an impossible sight._

_A woman, clad in beautiful armor that looked like steel, with pale, light, blonde hair that seemed to glow by itself, was standing in front of her in her living room. The woman's arms were bare but for the strong form fitting steel armor that seemed to go down to her hands. Even though the armor was that of steel, it looked as if it had leather markings accented into the design as it looked comfortable and did not clink when the warrior moved._

_The woman sported shoulder armor that did not stick from her form, but instead bent to follow the roll of the shoulder blade instead and the tip of the end of it covered the warrior's upper arm, just below her shoulder, by a hair. Small designs were seen on the woman's waist and chest armor and the swirls and markings looked majestic amongst the beautifully crafted and plate armor that covered the woman's shoulders, lower arms, and the frame of the woman's body._

_With her helmet, that covered the bridge of her nose along with her forehead, and a lithe of skin from the woman's neck on all sides, but left her cheeks, lips, and chin visible, she looked like a fierce warrior from Lauren's TV show. Stylized wings sported either side of the helmet and the girl wished she could wear it._

_The helmet, which was shaped in almost a bowl like fashion as all the old century helmets, was cut in a small rectangle just as it got to the woman's ears, and that is where little Lauren saw her beautiful hair as it was all pushed, as the girl had witnessed from the Discovery Channel, to the back of her helmet or to the sides to keep it out of the warrior's eyes. This warrior, Lauren saw, kept her beautiful blonde locks to the side, showing off her graceful hair along with her very amazing physique._

_As the girl looked the woman up and down, she saw the warrior's fingers, and a little of her upper palms, was washed with dark blood and she wondered how that could be possible. Did the warrior save Lauren from the beast?_

_“She was supposed to be the third casualty from the onslaught,” Another, gruffer, voice said opposite the warrior. Lauren was surprised she had not seen the man before, but she chalked it up to being so engrossed in the warrior woman._

_The man looked older than any man Lauren has ever seen, and she saw he sported a very long and gnarled walking stick in his right hand. His white beard ran down to his upper chest and his eyes were almost as dark as the beast's. The man's face looked amazingly wizened and Lauren wondered how much knowledge he must possess from his stature alone portrayed power._

_“And I gave you a casualty,” The warrior said back, her teeth gritted as if she was trying to keep her temper. She reminded Lauren of how she would talk to her father when she was upset and she would have smiled until she realized that she would never do that with her father again._

_“The price must be the same; it was taught to you long ago, Thomisina.”_

_Now that was an old name, Lauren thought to herself as she watched, unmoving, the two people's in front of her conversation._

_“Please, just let her go. She's just a little girl.”_

_“Your weakness is strange, Thomisina. You have never faltered in your duties until the girl. Why?”_

_“I-I don't know.” The warrior bowed her eyes to the ground as if it was the worst thing in the world not to have an answer to something. “She has been my charge for five years, now, from watching her parents. It is... understandable.”_

_That's right, Lauren thought, she_ had _just had her fifth birthday not two days ago._

_The man shook his head, his beard slowly brushing across his chest, and he looked back toward the warrior. “Forgive me, my daughter, but the price must be paid.”_

_“What will happen to me?” She sounded so sad, Lauren found._

_“The girl, along with you, will forget this event. And when it is time for the girl to die again, you will not remember her as you do now.” The old man looked into the warrior's eyes. “You will take her as you should have this night.”_

_“Please, please, do not make me. Rip my essence from my chest and put it into a new valkyrie! Destroy me instead! But please, please, do not make me take her.”_

_“My judgment is final, Thomisina. The price must be paid.”_

_The warrior looked toward little Lauren and her eyes held such sadness that the girl had never seen before. She would have gone to her, maybe squeezed her hand as she did to daddy all the times when he was upset, but just as she was about to move to the woman's side, everything seemed to escape her as she found herself in her home for the first time._

_Lauren found herself in new clothes, as if she had not soiled herself after witnessing her parent's murders, and she could not understand how one moment she had been in the presence of her dead parents and the beast, and the next in her home on the other side of the city._

_Little Doc just didn't understand._

+++

“What?” Lewis asked herself as she skidded to a halt. Her memories, like a flash flood, poured through her mind like gasoline. All it took was someone to light the fire. She knew she should continue running, she knew the beast was probably finished with Tamsin's form and was going to come for her, but she couldn't stop herself from looking back around.

The medic saw a small shape; she was so far away from it now, that could only have been Tamsin's broken and bloodied body laying in the dirt. If Lewis was correct, her neck would be broken, along with every other bone in her upper chest, but she wasn't thinking about those particular things in that very moment.

“The name Tamsin popped up a century later than the older, much closer meaning to the root word 'Twin', version of the name, and that name was... Thomisina,” Lewis breathed, looking toward the broken body of the woman that had saved her life more times than she could count.

She wasn't going to leave her. Not after her memory, for whatever reason, came cascading back to her after nineteen years. The woman had saved her life when she was a child, no she couldn’t save her parents but that was because her master commanded her to, that wasn't the woman she had shared a trench with fault. She had to get to her, she had to save her, and she had to tell her what the woman had lost just as the medic had lost them: her memories.

She was _not_ going to leave her.

Trying to catch her breath, as much as she could from running for five minutes after walking for hours, Lewis ignored the screaming in her muscles as she got enough momentum to begin running back toward her defender.

That was, however, until a large something broke the earth Lewis had just ran from, and she felt her collar of her shirt pull up quickly, cutting off her breath as it struck her throat forcefully. Just after she was plucked up, her body was flung into the ground, and Lewis' breath left her again as she felt like a thousand knives had pushed their way into her body.

Looking up to the broken form of the woman that saved her life, the woman that wasn't human, Lewis tried to raise her hand to her before she was pressed against Aleed the Beast's body and they began the trip to some unknown location; leaping and jumping all the way.

+++

The same memories that had found their way into Lewis' mind were cascading in Tamsin's as she took her last breath. She had remembered everything just as the foot stomped down onto her neck, effectively crushing it to a pulp, and she was happy to know that she had saved the woman twice in both instances. But, Tamsin had thought quickly, she would not be able to save her now...

She had been in the darkness for barely any time at all before her green eyes flicked open quickly and she sat up even quicker. Her hands flew to her chest and neck and she wondered what had just happened that they were not broken, nor did any blood bathe her flesh.

Looking around, she saw the wizened dark eyes of an old man and she scoffed as she pushed herself from the dirt. Patting herself off, she looked the man up and down before speaking, making sure to get every bit of dirt off of her after picking up her rifle and slinging it across her shoulder.

“Why did you save me?”

“You are my daughter,” The man said matter-of-factly.

“That's what you said when you wiped my memory and decreed if that little girl ever died again, I was meant to take her. Tell me, what kind of father does that?”

“You should be more afraid of my power,” The man said, his walking stick in his hand looking dangerous.

“I am your daughter,” Tamsin said, her hands flying up in the air. “Not like you don't have freakin' hundreds of those,” She grumbled, pinching the bridge of her nose. She really needed an Advil from the pain that was riding it's way like a firetruck through her brain. After a few moments, Tamsin whispered, “I'm sorry. She was taken again and I was not able to save her.”

“You are not meant to save her, Thomisina. You are meant to-”

“Take her up to Valhalla to sit at your hall, I know the drill!” Tamsin became calm again and looked up through strands of her fallen hair, “Please, I need to find her. I have not felt this way ever since my birth. She is... different. I will sacrifice anything to you, but please, you must allow me to find her again.”

“A price must be paid, Thomisina. The same price as the soul of the human's. Her soul, dear daughter, is one I have only seen once before.”

“Where was that?”

“In you.”

Tamsin, who had walked to the side of her god and looked out to follow the craters with her eyes, bent her head to the side and looked at the man sidelong. “Are you telling me if I don't kill her, if I don't allow her to die, so that I can take her to your kingdom, you will kill me in her place?”

“The same price must be paid,” The god repeated instead of answering the question.

Without even thinking about it, Tamsin said, “Transport me to the facility that she has been taken to and I will pay your price.”

The man turned to her fully and asked, “With her essence or with yours?”

Tamsin looked into the eyes of her god, he was taller than even her, and she whispered, “Transport me there, and you will find out.”

+++

The sun had been just a few hours from setting when Lewis sucked in a shaky breath as, finally, Aleed the Beast stopped bounding across the desert after coming into the shadow of a facility that looked eerily identical to the one her parents worked at when she was a child. They had been on the not-so-fun adventure for most of the day with no breaks, and Lewis' stomach felt raw and bleeding from the rough arm of the beast that had carried her.

Aleed the Beast quickly lifted Lewis from his arm and dragged her, painfully, by the arm, as if he didn't think it would suddenly pop off from his aggressive behavior, into the facility. Lewis had to stop herself from whimpering from the pain in her right arm and she thanked God for the small mercy that the ground was that sterile white she had remembered from her parent's facility over nineteen years ago. Whatever had happened there, whatever was being experimented on, must have been perfected in this duplicate lab, Lewis thought as she was being dragged. There would have been no way for the thing Aleed turned into to be a botched experiment and she thought that this was what whoever was running the lab wanted from the serum all those years prior.

The beast pushed open a door at the far end of the hallway, one he could definitely not fit through, and he threw Lewis harshly through the opened door.

Lewis wanted to scream in pain as her body fell onto the floor, not in the best position, and she went skidding across it as she bounced off the floor multiple times. Finally coming to a rest in the middle of the room, the medic quickly turned over onto her stomach, allowing her hair to drip down in front of her face, as she raised herself off of the ground slowly. Sucking in a breath as she held her right arm loosely to see if anything was sprained, she slowly stood, and looked around the room.

The room that looked just identical to the one her parents had died in.

“I hope it's exactly identical to your liking, Petty Officer, minus the dead bodies, of course.”

Lewis swung around immediately, wishing for the first time during her military career she had her pistol clipped to her side. Just as she turned toward the area in which the cage was set up in the old lab, a woman with way too many layers on in the desert walked from beside it. She looked as if fashion was her game, and she was definitely killing all others who opposed her, and her eyebrows seemed to be penciled on. Her press on nails were long and blue and Lewis wondered where the woman had flown in on, or if she just spent all of her days in the cool facility. The quip about her parent's dead bodies didn't pass by the medic and she instantly wanted to hurt the woman opposite her.

“Why did you bring me here?” Was all she asked, after the brunette had finally come just a few feet away from the woman.

“To perfect the serum, of course. The pill was just the next step, but the real improvement will make them continue to look human.”

“Pardon?”

The brunette looked at Lewis as if she was an idiot but said, “Darling, get with the program. I want to turn any human into one of, well, me.”

“With a monopoly on fashion and poorly drawn on eyebrows?”

“What did you just-” The woman had started walking toward Lewis, her hand in a claw like way, but she stopped short and pushed her hair upward and swiftly flicked her fingers across her eyebrows. “Did you think your dead girlfriend was the only one of us, honey? With the serum, I can make any human that can pay just like us, the higher the price the better the power. It's not that hard to get to fucking work.” The brunette crossed beside Lewis, knowing the woman wouldn't do anything to her, and just before she exited the room she called, “And don't even think about running. Aleed here will be outside the door the whole time. If you try to run, or stall for time, he'll pop your pretty little head like a grapefruit.” Her voice was way too chipper for Lewis' taste and then she was gone, leaving the medic alone in the room with all the same colored concoctions that she had watched her father play with when she was a girl.

Things were definitely not going to turn out pretty, Lewis knew, and since Tamsin was... dead there was no one to get her out of it this time, albeit her own self.

+++

Tamsin had barely finished her sentence when she blinked and, suddenly, when she opened her eyes she was standing in front of the facility she had remembered in her memories. The exact same replica of the building Lewis' parents worked in. The valkyrie would have blamed her god for sending her back in time, or something equally upsetting, if not for the harsh heat of the desert washing over her.

“Okay, someone built a facility in the middle of the freaking desert. How does that even work?” Tamsin whispered to herself after she opened the unsecured door to the building and walked inside with her weapon raised. She had felt with her ability that there were only two people inside the building, one filled with hate, and the other with fear. All she had to do to get to Lewis was take down Aleed the Beast and they'd be home free.

Yeah, because last time went _so_ well, Tamsin thought in a psychotically chipper tone as she walked through the eerily pristine white hallways. That serum whoever had been trying to create must have been why the facility was erected again, and that was why Aleed was still alive and in total hulk mode, Tamsin thought as she passed through the hallways. There were no doors as the last facility, and they all pointed toward the end of the building, and to the right.

Tamsin slowly looked around the corner to the end of the facility and found none other than Aleed the Beast's massive form standing in front of the door. After a few moments had passed, he would look back inside to see if none other than Lewis was working on the serum- Tamsin guessed that was what she was working on anyways- and after he found everything to be antiquate, he would look toward the white wall opposite him instead of down the long hallway where Tamsin's blonde hair poked from the corner.

She was sure, after she had placed the butt of her gun between her legs as she stood on the balls of her feet, that she wouldn't survive another head on attack with the beast and she wondered briefly if she could simply try an enchantment on a bullet. But, Tamsin reasoned with herself as she bent her head to the side, that would mean giving away her position and these tiny little hallways were so not going to protect her for long with a bulldozer that Aleed was now.

The valkyrie shook her head, strands falling into her eyes, she needed to take the risk. If she died again, fine, but at least she tried to save her medic one last time before she was made to return to the pools to rebuff.

Placing her hand into the strap of her weapon, holding the barrel to her forehead, Tamsin took calming breaths before she whispered, “Brenna hann niður skjótt.”

A grunt from the other end of the hallway told Tamsin that Aleed the Beast had heard a sound close to the door and she scrunched up her face as she was ready to die one last time to save the woman she cared for.

Tamsin's muscles bulged in her legs and her arms as she quickly turned the corner, her rifle aimed at the hopefully unawares beast. She was in luck, his eyes, though he had thought he heard something, was still on the opposite wall from him and he had not seen her yet. If she missed with the first enchantment, she could always try another before the beast's hands would come down onto her chest again.

Before she could open her mouth to scream a deathly final yell, the door swung open immediately from the opposite end of the hall, and Lewis came out with purple powder in her hand. Aleed the Beast looked down with shock, or as much shock an eight foot muscle giant could have, and before he could do anything the human blew the powder into his face, covering her own.

Groaning, Aleed quickly tried to swat the powder from his nose and mouth, but it was too late, whatever the substance was, it was already taking effect. Tamsin's face relaxed as she saw that Aleed was no threat to Lewis any longer, she was a little let down she could not finish her very heroic rescue, the women watched as Aleed the Beast's muscles bulged suddenly and then became normal against his skin. His grotesque reddish coloring turned back to normal as his body became smaller; his muscles returning to their normal size, and his anger toward the women seemed to dissipate with the drug.

He was on the floor in moments of the purple substance entering his system, seemingly returning to the state he was in just before the administration of the drug that turned him into the beast, and he lay there, choking on his own blood as a human's nervous system, organs, and bodily functions were not meant to go through such rigorous abuse.

“Well that was completely anticlimactic,” Tamsin whispered to herself as she watched the events unfold before her.

Lewis, who had wiped whatever she had blown in Aleed's face out into the air beside her, looked down at the man with sadness in her eyes. Bending down slowly, she caressed the man's full head of hair with a warm touch, uncaring of the small strands that seemed to come out from her caress.

Tamsin watched as the human bent down as Aleed tried to whisper something to her, and, after he was finished as Lewis had raised herself up and nodded down to him with a smile, his hand softened into Lewis' and just like that he was gone. If Tamsin was different, if she had not lived or remembered the past few days, she would have thought it nonsense to give the terrorist such a loving departure from the world. But she _had_ lived the past few days; she had remembered her compassion and her want to save Lewis' parents from the prototype beast.

So when Lewis stood up, her face falling from the ceiling as she blew out a hot breath, and the human looked down into beautiful green eyes, Tamsin didn't show her misunderstandings or contempt. She did not forsake their bond that they had been known to have for more than twenty years.

Tamsin simply lowered her weapon, rose out a hand to the woman at the opposite end of the hallway and said, “It's time to go home.”

+++

Walking out of the facility after Lewis had walked into her arms, and they had shared a very intimate hug, Tamsin opened the door for the woman and sighed from the heat of the desert.

“Its night time, it shouldn't be hot,” Tamsin whined, the back of her neck almost instantly dampening with sweat.

“It's almost night,” Lewis corrected, turning toward Tamsin and offering a smile. She had not told her of the threatening brunette woman from earlier and only cared for having Tamsin in her arms now. “The sky is going to be a beautiful dark blue tonight. There aren't any clouds.”

“Yeah, yeah, no clouds and... dark blue.” Tamsin's eyes widened as she realized what Lewis had said, realized what a dark blue sky could only entitle in their lives out in the desert, and she whirled around as she felt a presence behind them. Her gun would do nothing, she knew, but it made her feel good that it didn't tremble at her side like a scared school girl.

“Tamsin?” Lewis asked, her eyes resting on the woman's desperate face. Turning, Lewis saw the man she had only witnessed once in her life from her living room, and she looked at him as if he couldn't possibly be there. Though, Lewis rationalized, there were a lot of things in this world, which Tamsin and the old man standing before them, had no idea existed.

“Please,” Tamsin whispered, her eyes pinned on the old man's, “please, just let us go. Let us both go. There is an honorable man inside. Just take him instead.”

“One of your sisters have taken him, Thomisina. Now the right price must be paid.”

“Price? Tamsin, what is he talking about, what price?” Lewis cut in as she looked from the man towards the female next to her.

“Please,” Tamsin said, ignoring Lauren by her side, “take me instead. Don't take her from this world.”

“What are you talking about?!”

“If you cannot decide, I will take both of your souls,” The old man said, it sounded as if tears were striking his throat Lewis found, and she placed a hand on Tamsin's arm.

“Tamsin?”

“I can't let him take you.” Tamsin's fearful green orbs were still on the old man, unwilling to look at the person she came to care for, afraid if she did then her whole resolve would break down around her.

“I won't let him take you either.” Lauren's eyes shown determination, such fiery passion, even though Tamsin knew she couldn't have even begun to understand what was happening.

The women looked into each other's eyes, the valkyrie had turned slowly to look at the woman as if it was against her will, as the realization wrapped itself around them and Tamsin wanted to shake her head. To tell the blonde next to her even if the old man took both of their souls, the valkyrie would not live in peace with Lauren in the fields. She would be gone, like a shadow, from her mind once she entered Valhalla. She would just be gone.

Too much time had passed between them, however, and the valkyrie screamed, “Please, don't!” as she saw in her peripheral vision that the old man had raised his right hand from his walking stick, the stick seeming to be standing on its own, toward the woman.

“The price must be paid.”


	7. Her Scar

Doctor Lewis walked out of the bedroom, of the very cramped and tiny stone house, with nothing more than white panties and a very long buttoned down shirt slung over her shoulders. Her breasts bounced along with the woman's step and she put her hands above her head, her right clamping down slowly around her left wrist, a long yawn after a languorous stretch, scratching the back and side of her neck as she did.

Moving to the counter, just before the even smaller kitchen the natives brought in for her, at every unrequested remark, she took the red pen from the area in which the counter met the wall and uncapped it with her teeth. Pushing a button on her coffee maker, indoor electricity was another unrequested item the doctor had tried to disapprove of the wonderful men putting in for her, she looked back toward the dirty lingerie calendar she had been marking every day of the months. Rubbing the top of her foot against the back of her calf as she played around with the cap in her mouth, her eyes crawled over the piece of paper with a slight smirk.

“It's the final day,” She whispered, checking off the final square of June, which sported Dirty Kinky Cindy, and looking back over the calender for that month. Every single square had an identical red check mark filling it, some had X's to the minor annoyance of Lauren's OCD aspect of her personality, but she quickly shook it off every time she looked up at the piece of lamented paper. Her brown eyes flitted across the thirty checks and X marks of the calendar and she could finally rest again on the thirtieth day.

“The final day,” Lauren repeated as she capped the pen slowly with her thumb, the old scar on her left hand going unseen by years of familiarity, running her eyes over the piece of paper again.

The thirtieth day of June marked the final day, the round trip, of that full year. It had been a year, to Lauren's surprise, since she had been in the scorching heat of the desert. Since she had lied to the very beautiful gunny and had told her she never went to school to become a doctor, in truth she had gone to Yale for quite some time, and had ushered the taller woman into the bar to get completely wasted. Something Lauren wasn't accustomed to, even in the military, but in almost losing Rameriez she had made an exception. She chuckled as she placed the pen back onto the corner area where it lay; she was surprised at herself for remembering the former gunny's name.

How foolish she must have looked to the Icelandic blonde from her blackout session the human still didn't remember, Lauren smiled to herself at her memories, she wondered what the gunny would have thought of her now. If she would be smiling and happy that Lauren was using her abilities to help what Tamsin had been herself, or if she would yell and tell her to run the hell away from all things fae.

Fae. The word still felt strange on her tongue even though she had learned the word precisely a year ago, give or take a few days. She had gotten out of the military after the gunny's... exit, a few hacks and placed papers here or there greatly affected her honorable discharge as she had suddenly aged fifty years on paper, and Lauren had made her way to Africa.

The Congo, to be more specific.

To help a very large tribe with an illness that seemed to sweep across the area in the night, sending dozens into fevers and shakes. She had met the leader of that tribe, he strangely had no name but only went off the title The Ash, and she had worked closely with him ever since coming to the small village, giving him almost blow by blow updates of her work.

The doctor had been working there for a few months when she had met, again, the very pretty photographer from back in Afghanistan before she finished her tour. Nadia was her name, and she had the most beautiful eyes. Eyes that reminded Lauren of the gunny every time she looked into them. Which is why, Lauren found, she didn't try to look into them for long for fear of her memories flaring up again, the memories she had to keep buried for a year now.

Lauren sighed with love when someone wrapped their cool fingers across her midsection, their right hand hooking into her panties and then coming up to hold her, effectively breaking her out of her thoughts. She smiled as she let the back of her head fall against the person's cheek, and she closed her eyes as they both swayed there, smiling as the woman's beautifully wavy hair tickled her face.

“Today's the day,” Lauren said after awhile, the motion of their swaying getting the better of her as it tried to lull her back to slumber- or bed, Lauren thought with a smirk, just bed.

“Mmm,” The woman behind her moaned as she pushed her body, which was completely bare, into the woman in front of her, “what day is that?”

“ _The_ day, babe.”

“Oh, that day. The day I get my wings back.”

“The day you get your wings back,” Lauren repeated and smiled as she turned, looking up the few inches into the beautiful green eyes of her girlfriend.

Lauren wondered if the valkyrie- she had learned her to be a valkyrie instantly after their visit from the old man- disliked her working for the fae. Liked it if she worked so closely with Nadia, as the gorgeous woman would take pictures of the doctor on every occasion she got, snapping away and making Tamsin all the more jealous. She wondered briefly if Tamsin ever got into fights with the Ash and his subordinates, if she would get into arguments over the human's behalf, and would keep her mouth shut about it after coming home from her staring matches.

The human wondered about it all for the past few months, for the past year that they had exited Afghanistan and the military. When they had finally gotten away from anyone who could have possibly known them and hunkered down into the Congo to help a fae civilization thrive again.

“You know I'm not going to change or anything when I get them back, right?” Tamsin asked after awhile of the doctor looking aimlessly at her chest, her eyes trained on brown ones below her as the petite woman traced the jagged markings on the valkyrie's bare back. The markings, which looked much like new and strong scar tissue just on either side of the woman's inner shoulder blades, that showed everyone who witnessed them where her stolen wings once belonged.

“W-what? Oh.” Lauren smiled slightly as she came back to herself, her fingers pausing only slightly over the scar. “It's just... when Odin,” The petite blonde paused, reflecting on her own words: _it sounds so strange saying his name_ , “H-he said a price had to be paid, I thought he would take you. All of you, your physical shell, not just your essence.”

“We've talked about this,” Tamsin said as she took Lauren's left hand in her right one.

“I'm only human, Tamsin.”

“That's what I love about you,” The valkyrie said immediately, her lips hovering just at Lauren's forehead. “You're so completely human.”

“And because I'm human and you're fae... when he gives your wings back today, he'll give your immortal life back too. We won't grow old together, Tamsin. You'll outlive me by hundreds, if not thousands, of years!”

“What?” Tamsin asked, stepping back from Lauren but still holding onto her hand. “Is that why you've been acting strange the last couple days? Because you've been thinking about your death?”

“I'll have you for all of my mortal life but you, you're going to live for years after I'm gone, and that hurts me more than never having you at all.”

“Lauren,” Tamsin began, but quickly cut off as, the hairs on the back of her neck rising, she felt a familiar presence suddenly in the room.

Turning, and finding the familiar old man in the middle of their small space they laughingly called their living room, Tamsin tried to immediately cover her unmentionables. “Can you be any more of a perv!” She shouted, aiming the insult at her god.

“Please get some clothes on, Thomisina. As this new world is reformed from the old, I must request you shield yourself from my sight until you are decently clothed.”

“I wouldn't have to be clothed if you thought of knocking on a freaking door once in awhile,” Tamsin grumbled as she walked slowly, she had turned and quickly covered her ass with the back of her hand- which covered nothing Lauren thought as she smirked-, and the valkyrie had passed through the door into their room.

As Lauren stood there alone with the powerful god, she heard Tamsin grumbling as she tried to find the clothes from last night that were strewn across the room, and the human looked the old man up and down. It seemed almost yesterday when he had been pointing his hand toward the couple, ordering them to choose between themselves or they would both perish, the way Tamsin had stepped in front of her and ordered him to take her essence instead. The way he suddenly seemed to be in front of Tamsin, the way he swiftly plunged his brightly glowing hand into her ribcage with the screaming protests of the medic, the way she had fallen back to the ground dazed and confused after it was all over. Lauren shivered and tried to shake off the thought as she smiled kindly toward the old man.

“Before she comes out,” Lauren finally worked up the courage to ask, and was about to forget it when the old man's brown solemn eyes turned onto her, but sucked it up and continued, “I love your... daughter. I love her very much, great God Odin. I love her so much that I let her check X's on the calendar instead of check marks, and I'm okay with her eating like a Neanderthal, I think it's pretty adorable actually, and I love it when she reaches up to tall places that I can't reach. I love your daughter,” Lauren said again, her hands had come up to wave around as she gave her speech, “I love her so much that I would have allowed you to take my essence instead of hers a year ago on this day. But she stepped in front of me and suddenly, after a bright light, she was mortal just like me. And we've lived our mortal life for a full year now.

“We've put ourselves in a less dangerous environment, we've been living each day to the fullest, and we've loved each other each and every day since we met a year and three days ago. She's more generous, she _always_ had been brave, but she's less likely to start a fight over something incredibly small anymore. Tamsin is kind, and loving, and amazing to me. She loves me even if I'm human, and I love her even though she's fae. We've made a life here, in the Congo, it's so small but it doesn't matter because it's together. _We're_ together.” Lauren took a deep breath and looked up at the old man, her fingers slowly tugging together and she raised them to slightly point at herself. “So, what I want to ask you before she comes back out, great God, is that when you give her wings back, could you give her the choice to become immortal again. Could you allow her to keep her wings, her duty, even her ability to heal but still make her mortal like me so that we can live out our lives the way we've dreamed for the past year? Would you... could you find it in yourself to do that for, if not me, then your daughter? Please, I-”

“Okay, I'm presentable!” Tamsin grunted as she came back out of the room, her see through tank top, thankfully she had a bra underneath, and her black Capri pants adorning every curve, and she looked up after she came out of the room. “So, it's been a year,” Tamsin offered, walking over to bump shoulders with her girlfriend, her hands across her chest as she stared at her God.

His brown eyes slowly looked back to Tamsin and he said, “It has been a year, and as I said then, your essence does me little good without a shell to place it in. It is the will of the valkyries to house this essence, but as you have reached the end of your punishment, the time has come to place it back into your mortal shell.”

“And oh has this day been far off,” Tamsin said, her nose scrunching as she cooed the words.

“However, as you have lived your year as a mortal, as a small human, I will give you the choice from father to daughter.”

Tamsin's ears perked up, her body becoming more attentive instead of lounging on the counter, and she asked, “What are you talking about?”

“You will have all of the abilities as your valkyrie-maiden sisters; however you will still live a mortal life. You will be made to still ferry the dead to Valhalla when the call comes, but you will not live out your endless cycles and you will not have to bathe in the pools of Hvergelmir to replenish your strength.” The old man raised his hand out to the warrior and placed his hand back onto his walking stick. “If you so choose to call upon your immortality, you may do so at any time you wish.”

“That is... a most generous offer, Odin, and kind. Why would you give this to me?”

The old man smiled and glanced back towards Lauren, who had a look of gratitude in her eyes, then to Tamsin. “You are my kin.”

+++

Doctor Lauren Lewis, ward of the Ash, sat inside the Dal Riata nursing a very small glass of Jack Daniels whiskey. She had much rather have had her usual beer, maybe a shot or two of vodka or wine, but she was celebrating a very special day.

June the thirtieth.

Raising the glass in the air, her lover's favorite drink, she gulped down the liquid and made a face as it burned down her throat.

“Gah,” She said, making an even worse face as she swatted her hand to her side, “how do people drink this stuff?”

Trick, who had been cleaning glasses on the opposite side of the bar, looked up and smiled kindly at the doctor. “You know, you always order that same drink, that same amount, and say the exact same thing, each year on this day. Why is that?”

“It's for someone, in their memory,” Lauren said, her hands working against the condensation of the glass as she smiled faintly at the taller woman's memory.

“You've been doing this ritual for two years now, this marks the third.”

“Yes,” Lauren whispered, her eyes pinned on the glass. Looking up at Trick she said, “I keep hoping she'll walk through the door every year but it doesn't seem to happen. I came here, you know, for five years on this night.”

“Did you?” Trick looked genuinely shocked that he did not remember the blonde doctor for all those years.

“Really,” Lauren said, her brown eyes on Trick's. “I would have the other barmaids get the whiskey though. I didn't want to bother you. How skittish I was back then.”

“If I remember correctly,” Trick said, placing the now cleaned glass onto a cloth, “you were not very skittish at all. You seemed sure of yourself, confident in your abilities; this world that you had yourself thrust into didn't seem to affect you as we all thought it would.”

Lauren laughed. “I doubt any of you really cared how I would react as long as it didn't bother your lives. Before Bo came along, the fae were pretty...”

“Radical?”

“I was going to go for insanely uptight, but radical will do.” Lauren smiled and laughed when Trick flashed back a toothy grin. “May I have a bottle of red wine,” The human asked, her ritual coming to an end with the consumption of the wine.

She would head back home after that, and then, despite herself, would probably cry into her pillow from her lover's missing warmth.

It had been two and a half years since she had seen her lover, the woman had gone on a mark hunt, and Lauren had not heard from her since. It was ordinary for the human not to hear from the woman for a few days, even a month, but the valkyrie had always made it a point to contact Lauren whenever she had to be gone for more than a year to scout a mark's death much as she had to for the human's own parents.

But not for two, and now three, years with not as much as a phone call or handshake goodbye.

Lauren, for the first year, had wondered if she had done something wrong to make the valkyrie leave her. And instead of simply telling her she was leaving the relationship, the fae had simply gone and left her there with Nadia in a coma and to deal with the fae by herself. Sure at that time she had been indentured to the fae for five years, but that wasn't the point.

Maybe she was upset she had joined the fae, to be a ward of the Ash, after Nadia had fallen ill, Lauren had thought for the first two years of her servitude. They had always had fights after Lauren had come home, the gold pendant around her neck claiming her to be the Ash's, over someone Lauren herself wasn't even involved with. But, as the valkyrie had known, Lauren had such a big heart, she couldn't just allow the woman she had known for over a year just stay in that coma.

It had been Bo who had saved Nadia in the end and, Lauren thought sadly, the one to have killed her friend.

Shaking the thought from her mind, Lauren took a sip from her glass filled with wine, and her mind wandered to that of the Morrigan. Their first meeting had been when Tamsin was out on a mark hunt, just after Lauren had pledged herself to the Ash, and they had gotten back into the territory he ruled. The Morrigan wanted to see her new pet, and by God did she see her. It had taken all of Lauren's might not to jump across the table, wish for the pistol she had kept clipped to her belt in the military, so she could fire round after round into the fae's chest that had tried so hard to get her killed.

It wasn't until she went to the Ash to warn him of what the Morrigan had done a year and a half prior that he kept a closer eye, he already had an eye on the dark fae clan leader, on the overdressed woman and he had released more of the restrictions off of Lauren for her good intel. As if she were a pet, Lauren reminded herself after she had gotten the restrictions waved from her, and she continued to think as much every time she had done something good for the light fae leader and yet another restriction was released from her.

Taking another sip of her wine, Lauren sighed as she looked at her watch: 2200. If she left now she could take a taxi before the drunken evening rush of the town, and she'd get one that didn't smell of vomit and alcohol. Weighing the options over in her mind, should she risk the smelling cab and drown out more of her woe with alcohol, or should she get a cab and pull out a bottle of scotch at home, and she sighed as she looked down at her drink. Taking the last sip of her wine, deciding finally, Lauren thanked Trick for the company, and began to walk out of the bar.

“Wait,” Trick called from the bar, his hand holding a small wad of clipped cash, “You forgot your money.”

“How did that happen,” Lauren asked herself as she walked toward the bar. “Thank you, Trick. I'll see you tomorrow about the lab results for Bo's case.”

“Fae of the week and all; must be Monday,” Trick finished, smiling brightly as the human returned the smile.

Turning, her head down as she pushed the clipped wad of cash into her pant pocket, Lauren didn't see where she was going until it was too late. Her clumsiness got the better of her and she would have gone down hard after bumping into the person opposite her, her feet seeming to fall from under her body, if not for the individual opposite her reaching out a strong hand and holding onto her wrist. Pulling her back up slowly, Lauren still had not seen who it was; the human brushed herself off as she hastily tried to apologize.

“I-I'm so sorry! I didn't mean, I mean I didn't see-” Lauren looked up then, finally after making sure she had not dropped anything and the person she saw in front of her was one she had wanted to perceive for three years, “-you.” Lauren finally finished, her exhalation of breath turning the word into a long drawn out syllable.

“Me,” The valkyrie whispered, her eyes trained on Lauren and her only.

“Your hair's longer,” Lauren said, the only thing she could think of saying. “And you look good, like you had enough protein in your diet. And-”

“Lauren, you're rambling.”

“Sorry.”

“You're cute when you ramble. I've missed it,” Tamsin whispered, holding up a hand so her fingers would brush Lauren's cheek slightly. Looking down at the human's hands she reached out to touch, Tamsin's eyebrows raised as she looked at Lauren's left hand. “It's healed, the scar, it's gone.”

“Oh, that.” Lauren looked down at her palm and smiled slightly. “Unicorn blood is used to heal wounds. It's painful, and it'll leave your body racked- even though it was localized to my hand-, from the speedily recovery; it it'll heal almost any wound faster than half a day.”

“You remembered,” Tamsin said, her lips pulling up into a smirk.

“I remembered.” Lauren smiled up towards the valkyrie and pulled her in for a kiss. “Wait a minute,” Lauren said, lowering herself from her tiptoes and looking deathly glares at Tamsin who, to the human's wonderment, seemed to pout from not receiving the kiss. “Why didn't you call? You've been gone for so long.”

“I-I needed to get away. Some bad guys were following me from an old bodyguard job I did, and I couldn't forgive myself if you got hurt.”

“You'd protect me,” Lauren said, her eyes still on Tamsin's. She was about to bring the valkyrie's lips to hers again but Lauren pulled back at the last moment.

“Oh come on,” Tamsin moaned, as her hands fell and linked to the small of the human's back.

“Did you just say a bodyguard job? What bodyguard job!”

Tamsin chuckled as she held Lauren close, tight into a hug, and as she released her, the valkyrie's green eyes washed away any feigned anger Lauren held. “I'll tell you all about it once you've told me about the last few years I've missed. You seem to have a nice place here,” Tamsin said, finally looking around the old building.

Slipping the valkyrie's hand in her own, and without another word, Lauren pulled Tamsin gently toward the bar to where Trick had just finished placing the glasses back where they belonged. As the two blonde's came opposite him, Trick turned all his attention on them.

“Trick,” Lauren said brightly, “I'd like you to meet the woman that has made me drink whiskey for the past few years.”

“So it's your fault this poor thing has to sully her taste pallet with whiskey.”

“I'm completely innocent, barkeep,” Tamsin said, her hands waved into the air.

She was the old Tamsin, Lauren found as she sat down for another round of drinks. Tamsin had ordered them, she had a truck now that she had been living in for the past few years, and she had set the keys onto the counter after the females had taken their first sips of the alcohol. She told

Lauren of her new job as a detective in some type of peace program- how she was partnered with Dyson no less- the new Ash, Hale, had set up and how Tamsin was feigning her allegiance to the Morrigan to wait for her to screw up so that she could end her life, or allow herself to fall Tamsin reprimanded herself after Lauren had given her an evil look.

The valkyrie had told Lauren all about her on the run stories for the past few years and, as the night waned, Lauren began to tell her lover of her few years within the fae world. She told her of Bo, how smart and strong she was, and of Dyson, in detai l so the valkyrie would be prepared, Trick- with the barkeep coming into his section of the conversation with small quips- and of Kenzi. She hadn't touched the subject of Nadia, she decided to wait until they were safely in the walls of Lauren's apartment for her to touch on that subject, and instead they laughed as if no time at all had passed between them.

And for the next few months, the next few years, all that was filled between them every day was laughter and love. They were finally together, living a mortal life the both of them, and the fae world wasn't going to stop them or get in their way. It didn't matter that Tamsin never went on a mark hunt again, and Lauren didn't ask as she relished in the time she had with the valkyrie.

They were finally together again, Lauren thought as she raised her glass into the air and recited the Icelandic cheer Tamsin had taught her years ago, and nothing was going to change the women's love for each other.

Through the running, the sacrifices, the protection, the burials, the target practices, the marks; through the years of being separated, their scars were finally beginning to heal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all those who have read, gave reviews, and left kudos. You are all amazing and I hope you loved the ride that was Love is a Battlefield.  
> Again, thank you for giving the time to read this story and I hope you cried tears of joy, sadness, and righteous fury for our heroes.


End file.
